When a child displays challenging behavior, an adult’s first question is often how to make it stop. For Dr. Niki Elliott, a clinical professor at the University of San Diego, founder of the Mindful Leaders Project, and author of Heart-Centered Connections: Seven Essential Skills for Helping Neurodiverse and Marginalized Children Thrive, there may be a more important question to ask first: what is that behavior trying to communicate?
In the interview, Elliott discusses how boundaries and understanding can coexist, why neurodiverse traits are often mistaken for defiance, and how a caregiver’s own emotional state can influence a child’s behavior. She also explores nervous system regulation, resilience through change and grief, and the importance of gradually replacing adult management with self-advocacy and agency as children enter adolescence. “Sometimes changing a child’s behavior begins with changing our own,” she says.
In Heart-Centered Connections: Seven Essential Skills for Helping Neurodiverse and Marginalized Children Thrive, you encourage caregivers to move beyond parenting that is primarily focused on discipline and correction. How can that shift transform the way a child understands themselves and their relationship with adults?
One of the central ideas in Heart-Centered Connections is that behavior is communication. When we as parents or caregivers focus primarily on discipline and correction, our driving question is “How do I stop this behavior?” Caregivers using a heart-centered approach observe the same behavior and ask a different question: “What is my child’s behavior communicating?” This simple shift in focus helps us begin to see the child differently, which allows them to begin to experience themselves, and their relationship with us, differently.
Consider a child with dyslexia who repeatedly avoids reading homework. A discipline-focused response might interpret that behavior as laziness or defiance. But if we become curious instead, we may discover that the child is protecting themselves from the frustration or shame of repeatedly struggling with something their peers seem to do easily.
Using a heart-centered approach we might say, “I notice reading has been really frustrating lately. Let’s figure out what would make this more manageable.” We might break the assignment into smaller pieces, alternate reading aloud together, use an audio book or text-to-speech software, or take more frequent breaks. Heart-centered parenting requires us to gain an accurate understanding of the behavior before assigning intent. It doesn’t mean eliminating high expectations. It means removing unnecessary barriers so the child can meet them.
That shift changes the child’s internal story from “I’m lazy” or “I’m bad at school” to “My brain learns differently, and these are the strategies that help me succeed.” Once a child has internalized this empowering perspective with a caregiver’s support, we often see a significant reduction in challenging behaviors. This, in turn, truly strengthens their relationship for the long term.
Many caregivers want to create emotionally safe relationships while also navigating exhaustion, work, and everyday pressures. What small actions can help strengthen the connection with children even on the most difficult days?
Connection doesn’t have to require a lot of time. Often it begins with changing what happens in the first few minutes of a difficult interaction.
For a child with sensory sensitivities, for example, coming home after managing noise, movement, lights, conversations, and expectations all day can mean their nervous system has very little capacity left. The behavior parents see at home may be irritability, withdrawal, or a meltdown over something seemingly small.
Instead of immediately asking questions or giving instructions, create a short decompression ritual. Lower the lights, reduce unnecessary noise, offer a familiar sensory support, and give the child ten or fifteen minutes with fewer demands.
I also encourage families to practice mindfulness and breathwork together. Instead of saying, “You need to calm down,” try, “We’ve all had a long day. Let’s practice coherent breathing together for five minutes.” Nervous system regulation becomes something the family practices together, not something imposed on the child as discipline. These moments not only help the caregiver manage exhaustion and burnout, it also becomes something the child looks forward to as a daily point of connection.
How can adults distinguish between behavior that requires a clear boundary and an emotional expression that needs to be understood before it is corrected?
Children need both boundaries and understanding. If a child or a situation is unsafe, the boundary immediately comes first: “I won’t let you hit.” We can establish physical safety boundaries without shaming the child. Once the child is able to settle, we can begin to investigate what may have been the cause of the behavior. This is especially important for parents of neurodiverse children, where sensory overload, executive functioning challenges, communication differences, and learning disabilities are often mistaken for defiance.
A child with an auditory processing sensitivity may leave the dinner table repeatedly, appearing to the parent as defying their rules, when in reality the child can’t tolerate hearing all the silverware scratching the plates. A child repeatedly sharpening their pencil may seem to be avoiding the assignment when in reality they are struggling with fine motor skills and keep breaking the pencil tip. The Heart-Centered Connections framework asks us to investigate before assigning intent. I encourage adults to ask: Is anyone unsafe? What might this behavior be communicating? What skill or support does this child need? Discipline should ultimately teach a child what to do, not make them suffer for what they can’t yet manage on their own.
Children do not always have the vocabulary to explain fear, sadness, anger, or anxiety. What signs might indicate that a child is emotionally overwhelmed or beginning to feel disconnected from the family?
Behavior often externalizes a child’s internal world. I encourage adults to watch for changes in sleep patterns, loss of interest in preferred activities, increased lethargy or irritability, meltdowns, and anxiety. For many neurodiverse children in particular, they often lack strong interoception, or their ability to scan their bodies to identify internal cues or emotions. For example, an autistic youth may not be able to easily register cues that their body is hungry or thirsty. Instead, they may start to display anger, agitation or lethargy without being able to communicate the cause.
Supporting neurodiverse children about body sensations (stomach flutters, hot, cold, tight, dizzy, etc) and associated feelings (dizzy = anxious) is so critical because it helps them develop language to share more of their internal world with adults and advocate for their needs. Equally important, this awareness helps adults not take children’s behavior personally and instead look at patterns in the environment or relationships to determine what might be causing the child to disconnect.
Your work emphasizes resilience during both everyday challenges and major life transitions. How can caregivers support children through experiences such as changing schools, family separation, grief, or the arrival of a new sibling without immediately trying to remove every difficult emotion?
For many neurodiverse children, changing schools or moving to a new home can feel life-shattering. This means a disruption in their routine, sensory environment, teachers, and more. We understand that strong routines and predictability are essential in helping them access a sense of felt-safety to support pro-social behavior. Rather than simply trying to convince the child that everything will be okay, we need to make the unknown more familiar to them. Schedule a time to visit the school or home, research pictures and bus routes, identify where connections can be made prior to the transition if possible.
At the same time, it’s important that adults actively validate the emotions the child is experiencing in the moment. “It is okay to feel nervous, this is a big change, but you can do it. I’m here to support you.” Resilience grows when children experience something hard and develop strategies to work through it. Most importantly, resilience grows when children are supported by adults who stand side-by-side with them to model how difficult experiences can be worked through as a team. Children need to witness how we move through our own difficult emotions like grief, loss or change. I don’t think it’s always helpful to hide our own tears and frustrations from them. It’s better to model how to move through difficult emotions together and see how we’re stronger on the other side of it.
Creating an emotionally safe environment also requires adults to recognize their own reactions and vulnerabilities. What role does caregiver self-regulation play in a child’s emotional well-being?
Self-awareness is the first skill in Heart-Centered Connections. A child’s nervous system is constantly scanning the adults around them. If the adult is rushing from one thing to the next and the child comes up to ask them a question and they bite back with “not now”, the child is reading their voice, facial expression, body posture, pacing, and tone. The child may become more anxious, distracted, or shut down. Without even realizing it, the caregiver’s stress has now impacted the child’s behavior. This is especially true for neurodiverse children whose nervous systems may be more sensitive to changes in tone, pace, and unpredictability. I encourage adults to consider “What was happening with me right before my child’s behavior changed?” This is an important perspective shift that asks the adult to put themselves in the equation. Sometimes changing a child’s behavior begins with changing our own.
In my work with parents, educators, and helping-professionals, we engage in an activity that I refer to as nervous system mapping. During this process, we invite adults to examine their own nervous system triggers and sensory stressors to determine how often the environments they set for children are determined by what the adult’s own nervous system needs to feel settled, not necessarily what’s best for the children at that moment. For example, in my book, I tell the story of a second grade teacher who never provided arts projects or interactive lessons in her class because her own nervous system demanded strict silence and restricted movement in order for her to feel settled enough to function. This led to a lot of punitive discipline in her classroom when many second graders were unable to remain settled in an environment that severely restricted movement and engagement. Our nervous system mapping process revealed this blind spot for her and began her process of personal transformation. She ultimately realized the behavior issues in her classroom started with her, not with children.
You argue that heart-centered parenting can benefit children of every age and background. How should this approach evolve as a child enters adolescence and begins seeking greater independence?
Ultimately, the goal isn’t to raise neurodiverse children who become easier for other people to manage. It’s to help children understand how their brains and bodies work, recognize their strengths and needs, and confidently advocate for what helps them thrive. In adolescence, this becomes even more important.
Rather than an adult always intervening, we can help the young person recognize their own early signals: difficulty concentrating, covering their ears, or feeling the need to escape. Then we can develop a plan together. What sensory support do you need? How can you advocate for yourself? What do you feel are your greatest skills and interests? How do you create opportunities to lean into and develop your strengths?
Although we naturally feel a strong urge to protect our children as they seek greater independence in the world, it’s important that we begin to move away from managing the adolescent and more towards developing their own self-advocacy and agency. This skill of building self-advocacy skills early in early adolescence is very important. In my work at the university level, I see so many students entering college with parents who are attempting to contact professors to advocate for their children or demand grade changes. Some parents even attempt to accompany their children for job interviews. There are times when this level of overshadowing can cross the line from being a healthy connection to a challenge that negatively impacts the adolescent’s growing sense of autonomy and agency.
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