When a child refuses to go to school, when a teenager lashes out without warning, or when an adult with disability becomes distressed in a busy environment, it can be easy to focus on the behaviour itself. What happened? How do we stop it? What went wrong?
But Positive Behaviour Support begins with a different question entirely: What is this person trying to tell us?
This shift in perspective is one of the most powerful foundations of PBS, and it changes everything about how support is designed and delivered. Understanding behaviour as communication is not a soft or abstract idea. It is a practical, evidence-based framework that consistently leads to better outcomes for participants and their families.
This guide explores what it means to see behaviour as communication, why it matters, and how this principle shapes the way Liberty Behavioural Services works with every person we support.
All Behaviour Has a Function
At the heart of Positive Behaviour Support is a simple but profound idea: every behaviour serves a purpose. Even the behaviours that are most difficult to witness or manage are not random or purposeless. They are the person’s best available way of communicating something important.
That something might be:
- I am in pain or physical discomfort
- I am overwhelmed by sensory input
- I do not understand what is being asked of me
- I am frightened or anxious about something
- I need more interaction or connection
- I want to escape a situation that feels unbearable
- I am bored or under-stimulated
- I feel like I have no control over what is happening to me
The behaviour, whether it is aggression, self-injury, withdrawal, property damage, or something else, is not the problem. It is the signal. The problem is the unmet need or the communication breakdown underneath it.
When we respond to the behaviour in isolation, such as attempting to stop it through consequences or restrictions, we may suppress the signal without addressing the message. The underlying need remains unmet. The behaviour either continues or changes form.
When we respond to the function of the behaviour, the need it is trying to communicate, we can create conditions where the person no longer needs to use that behaviour because their needs are being understood and met in safer, more effective ways.
Why Traditional Behaviour Management Often Falls Short
Traditional approaches to behaviour management tended to focus on compliance. The goal was to stop the behaviour using a combination of rewards for desired behaviour and consequences for undesired behaviour. In some contexts, these approaches produced short-term results.
But they rarely produced lasting change, and they often caused harm. When a person is punished or ignored for communicating distress, they do not learn that their needs do not matter. They may become more distressed, more anxious, or more desperate to be heard. The behaviours may escalate, shift, or become more difficult to support over time.
Positive Behaviour Support does not dismiss the importance of safety or the need to reduce behaviours of concern. But it recognises that lasting, meaningful change comes from understanding, not from compliance. People who feel understood are far more likely to develop new skills, engage in their community, and build the kind of life they want to live.
The Functional Behaviour Assessment: Listening Carefully
In practice, the principle that behaviour is communication is applied through a process called a Functional Behaviour Assessment (FBA). This is the cornerstone of developing an effective Behaviour Support Plan.
An FBA involves gathering detailed information about:
- When and where the behaviour occurs
- What tends to happen immediately before it (antecedents or triggers)
- What happens during and after the behaviour (consequences)
- The participant’s communication abilities and style
- Sensory sensitivities and preferences
- Medical, physical, or mental health factors that may be relevant
- The environments, relationships, and routines that surround the person’s daily life
By examining all of these factors together, a trained behaviour support practitioner can identify the function of the behaviour. Is it to escape something uncomfortable? To gain something desired? To communicate pain? To regulate sensory input? To seek connection?
Once the function is understood, strategies can be developed that teach the person a safer, more effective way to meet that same need. This is called a replacement behaviour, and it is at the heart of what PBS aims to achieve.
What This Looks Like in Practice
Consider a participant who frequently becomes aggressive during transitions between activities at school. A traditional response might involve removing the participant from the classroom when aggression occurs, in effect allowing them to escape the transition. This consequence, while well-intentioned, may actually reinforce the behaviour because escape was what the participant was seeking.
Through an FBA, a PBS practitioner might identify that the transitions are triggering anxiety because the participant does not know what is coming next. The aggression is not defiance. It is fear.
Strategies might then include providing visual schedules so the participant can see the day ahead, giving warnings before transitions occur, practising transitions during low-stakes moments, and teaching the participant a calmer way to signal when they need more time or support.
The behaviour reduces not because it has been punished or suppressed, but because the underlying need has been addressed and the participant has been given a better tool to meet it.
Behaviour as Communication Across the Lifespan
This principle applies across all ages and all stages of development, though the specific behaviours and their functions will differ.
In Young Children
Young children, particularly those who are pre-verbal or have limited communication skills, rely heavily on behaviour to express their needs. Crying, hitting, biting, tantrums, and refusal are all forms of communication. Understanding what a young child is trying to say through these behaviours is essential to supporting their development and reducing distress for the whole family.
In Teenagers and Young Adults
Adolescence brings complex emotional needs alongside increasing expectations for independence. Behaviours in this age group often reflect a desire for autonomy, a struggle to belong, or difficulty managing a nervous system that is still developing. During this period, PBS focuses on building self-awareness, emotional regulation skills, and more effective ways to express needs and boundaries.
In Adults
For adults living with disability, behaviours of concern are frequently linked to environments or systems that do not adequately support their needs. Changes in accommodation, support workers, or health can all trigger new or escalating behaviours. PBS in adult settings focuses on understanding the impact of these systemic factors and ensuring that the person’s voice and preferences remain central to their support.
Supporting Families to Hear the Message
One of the most valuable things a behaviour support practitioner can do is help families shift their perspective. When a parent understands that their child’s meltdown is not manipulation but communication, something significant changes. The frustration and distress that come from feeling challenged give way to curiosity and compassion. And those responses, curiosity and compassion, create far better conditions for progress than frustration and exhaustion.
This does not mean that behaviour support is without boundaries. Keeping everyone safe is always the priority. But safety and understanding are not in conflict. In fact, understanding leads to safety far more reliably than control ever does.
At Liberty Behavioural Services, we invest time in supporting families and carers to understand the function of their loved one’s behaviour. This understanding is not just useful for the formal strategies in a behaviour support plan. It is a lens that families carry into every interaction, every difficult moment, and every small victory.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does understanding behaviour as communication mean accepting it?
Not at all. Understanding why a behaviour is occurring does not mean it is acceptable for it to continue. What it means is that the path to changing the behaviour runs through understanding, not through consequences alone. We work to meet the underlying need through safer, more effective means while the person develops new skills.
What if the behaviour seems random or has no obvious trigger?
Even behaviours that appear random usually have a function. Identifying it may require careful observation over time and input from everyone who knows the person well. A skilled practitioner can help uncover patterns that are not immediately obvious.
Behaviours can also have delayed-onset triggers that are called setting events. Things that set the scene for an increased likelihood of them occurring over a longer period of time. For example, losing a friendship, being sick or a major disappointment in their life might set the threshold of an agitated response back to seemingly small triggers to be much lower for the following week, fortnight or month.
How long does it take to understand the function of a behaviour?
This varies depending on the complexity of the behaviour and how much information is available. A thorough functional assessment typically takes several weeks and involves conversations with the participant and their support network, direct observations, and review of relevant records. The time invested in this process is what makes the resulting strategies genuinely effective.
A Different Kind of Support
When behaviour is understood as communication, support becomes less about managing and more about listening. Less about controlling and more about connecting. Less about stopping and more about understanding.
This is the kind of support that creates lasting change. And it is the kind of support that we are committed to providing at Liberty Behavioural Services.
If you would like to learn more about how we apply this approach, or if you are wondering whether a behaviour support assessment could help you better understand your loved one’s needs, we would love to hear from you.
Contact Liberty Behavioural Services today to speak with our team.
