Relationships Are Part of the Environment

He laughs at his Tuesday worker's terrible jokes, and by Thursday afternoon, with someone he doesn't trust yet standing in the same kitchen, he has stopped talking altogether.

Same kitchen. Same kettle. Same young man. The Tuesday notes say "chatty, engaged, helped make lunch". The Thursday notes say "withdrawn, refused activities, possible escalation". Read side by side, they could be about two different people.

They're about one person in two different relationships.

Why people behave differently with different people

None of us is the same person in every room. You might be confident with one friend and self-conscious with another. Patient with one family member and quick to snap with the next. Funny in one group and quiet in another. At work, someone can look incredibly capable under one leader and second-guess everything under someone else.

That doesn't make us fake. Different relationships bring different parts of us forward.

The people we support work the same way. We tend to describe them with fixed labels like difficult, shy, aggressive or easygoing. Behaviour is usually far more contextual. It shifts with:

•         History. What has happened between these two people before?

•         Familiarity. How well do they know each other?

•         Power. Who decides what happens next, and how does that feel?

•         Expectations. What does each person expect the other to do?

•         Trust. Has this person kept their word?

•         Safety to get it wrong. Can he make a mistake here and still be okay?

How relationships change a behaviour assessment

My psychotherapy training keeps pulling me back to this. In therapy, the relationship in the room is part of what we pay attention to. In PBS, we can spend so much time asking what's happening inside the person that we forget to ask who is in the room with them.

A functional behaviour assessment (FBA) is the process of working out what a behaviour does for someone and why it happens. A relational lens adds a few questions:

•         Who is present when things go well, and who is present when they're hard?

•         What history sits between the person and each of these people?

•         Whose presence helps him feel safe enough to try something new?

•         What might each relationship be teaching him to expect?

For the young man in the kitchen, the answer was clear once we looked. His Thursday worker was new, quiet and very careful. He couldn't read her yet, so he stopped talking until he could. The plan focused on helping them get to know each other: his Tuesday worker introduced them, they started prepping lunch together, and she took time to learn his jokes. Within a few weeks, Thursdays sounded a lot more like Tuesdays.

Map the person's relationships

Use this with families or teams. Pick one person and work through it together.

For each important person in their life, ask:

1.       How often are they together, and for how long have they known each other?

2.       What are they like together? Relaxed and joking, or quiet and watchful?

3.       What helps that relationship? Shared humour, time, introductions, routine?

For the young man in the kitchen, his Tuesday worker was a two-year relationship built on shared humour. His Thursday worker was new, and needed time and a warm introduction.

Look for patterns. The relationships where he thrives often hold the clues for the ones where he struggles.

What to do this week

Pull two sets of notes about the same person from different days. If they read like different people, ask who was in the room each time. The answer is often the most useful thing in the file.

Common questions

Why does someone's behaviour change with different support workers?

Relationships shape how safe, understood and in control a person feels. History, trust and familiarity all affect behaviour.

What is relational positive behaviour support?

An approach to PBS that treats relationships as part of the person's environment and part of the support itself, alongside strategies and systems.

How can families help a new worker build a relationship?

Share what the person loves, how they communicate and what helps them feel safe. An introduction from someone they already trust helps too.

Talk to us

If the person you support seems like a different person with different people, talk to us before you refer. Email intake@bespokebehaviour.com.au or use our referral page.

Stories in this post are composites, shared with details changed to protect privacy.