The tantrum. The whining about going to school. The punch that’s thrown. The slipping grades. The sneaking out. The lie. The shouting. The moping around the house.

These are not things you like to see your kids do. Maybe these are things you’ve talked to them about before, maybe a million times. But maybe that’s the problem. You’re seeing the wrong thing. You’re talking about the wrong thing.

In her wonderful book Good Inside (yes, we love it), Dr. Becky Kennedy writes that “on the surface we see a behavior, but underneath we see a person.” We’ve said before that your kids are always talking to you—just not necessarily with words. “Throwing the cereal box wasn’t the main event,” Dr. Becky explains. “It was a window into the main event. Behavior, in all its forms, is a window: into the feelings, thoughts, urges, sensations, perceptions, and unmet needs of a person. Behavior is never “the story” **but rather it’s a clue to the bigger story begging to be addressed.”

What a wonderful gift it would be to your family, to everyone you met, if you could start seeing behavior not as a thing to be upset about but a window into how someone is doing, what is going on with them. We’ve said it many times—they’re telling you that they’re hungry, that they’re tired, that they’re scared, that they’re lonely, that they’re overwhelmed or stressed. But they don’t know how to say that…so they lash out, so they hide in their room, so they call you something mean.

If you’ve practiced hearing what’s really being said, if you can see through that window, you’ll be able to deal with this so much better. And you’ll be able to teach them, reflect back to them–no matter how old they are—what their feelings are and how mature, regulated people deal with feelings.