A New Look at Misbehavior: Creating Upstream Solutions for Dysregulated Students with Dr. Doug Bolton

This episode will be the final one of 2025, as we take a break from the podcast over the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. Before we introduce today’s topic and guest, we want to address the “elephant in the room”: the shifts happening in the Department of Education under the Trump administration. Just a heads-up: following us on Instagram is the best way to stay up to date on current happenings in our world. Please keep in touch! Today’s topic is behavior and discipline with our guest, Dr. Doug Bolton. Join us!

Dr. Doug Bolton is a clinical psychologist who has always been drawn to working with kids who experience behavioral problems. Knowing that being in schools gives him the best vantage point from which to help kids, Doug became a school psychologist and later a principal at a therapeutic school. He is currently a consultant working with families to help vulnerable kids become more resilient. From his unique perspective and wide range of experience, he wrote the book Untethered.

Show Highlights:

• When it comes to discipline and punishment with our kids, we are getting it wrong.
• Incentives, motivations, and punishments
• Regulation and dysregulation show up differently for different kids. (“Misbehavior is stress behavior.” –Stuart Shanker)
• Figure out the “why” of the stress—and help them learn to cope.
• How punishments reinforce failure and create shame
• Understanding upstream vs. downstream behaviors
• Our expectations of students under the guise of “academic rigor”
• The results of our insensitivity to kids’ developmental needs
• An issue of development: Kids born in August are 31% more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD than kids born in September.
• Steps to create upstream solutions to help kids build resilience when they misbehave:
• Focus on assisting them to get regulated.
• Get curious, and listen to what’s going on with them.
• Get them talking to each other to create a community of belonging.
• The value of taking a classroom to “pause and ponder.”

Resources:

Connect with Dr. Doug Bolton: Website and Untethered

Contact us on social media or through our website for more information on the IEP Learning Center: www.inclusiveeducationproject.org.

Thank you for listening!

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