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 Supporting
Positive Behaviour
in Intellectual
Disabilities
and Autism
Practical Strategies for
Addressing Challenging Behaviour

TONY OSGOOD

Jessica Kingsley Publishers

London and Philadelphia
 Contents

1. Introduction
2. Manifesto: A Bill of Rights (and Wrongs)
3. Working Together or Pulling Apart?
4. Behaviour is Lawful even when Awful: Exotic Communication
5. The Elephants in the Room: On Being Person Centred
6. Exploring: Understanding a Different Story
7. Being There and Doing More: Support Strategies
8. Hits Happen: Keeping Things Together when Things go Wrong
9. What People have Taught Me
10. Afterword: What I Think when I Talk about Autism

References
About the Author
Subject Index
Author Index
Acknowledgements
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

This little book aims to be accessible, grounded and practical in its

advice on challenging behaviour in intellectual or developmental
disabilities (IDD), and autistic children and adults. At the same time
it raises bigger questions about what challenging behaviour means,
how we think of it and the ways we respond.
The book is written with support workers, parents and family
carers, advocates, managers and personal assistants in mind,
though it will benefit professionals, also. This book does not replace
the need for informed and accountable advice to be sought, but it
does suggest approaches that often help and ways of thinking that
make complex situations clear. The advice contained in this book is
based upon best practice guidance concerning what is currently
termed positive behaviour support (PBS). As such, the style of the
book blends informal and interesting sources with more formal ones.
To inform how we respond to challenging behaviour it is best to
know why it happens. If we are not clear on the why, the how can
go awry. To begin to explore why, three questions can be asked:
• Is the person well, living an interesting and meaningful life,
surrounded by people they like and who like them enough to
support them well?
• Is the person’s ability to communicate recognised and
responded to?
 • What events regularly predict and follow the challenging
behaviour?

In the thirty years I have worked to support people to understand

challenging behaviour there have been three major changes to how
we think about such behaviours:
• We now understand that challenging behaviour is meaningful
for the person. Before thinking about how to support
someone, we need to understand what the behaviour
achieves for the individual.
• We now understand that behaviour can be thought of as
communication. This helps us to see that teaching new ways
of behaving and communicating is essential. A plan lacking
strategies to aid communication is a poor plan.
• We now know quality of life is an intervention in and of itself,
not a future goal. A life without rapport, friendship,
opportunities to make choices and learn, a life lacking
activities to enjoy, is a poor life.

Waiting for challenging behaviour to disappear before increasing

choice and opportunities means the person may never qualify for an
ordinary life. They will live a life caught in a limbo between their
severe reputation and a desirable future. Such waiting exacerbates
challenging behaviour. Worse still, people using services may simply
give up.
The above three ‘innovations’ seem common sense today,
hindsight being what it is. The principles – a functional approach, a
communication focus, a quality of life agenda – underpin this book,
and align with current advice on best practice, which seems to be
incorporated within the term positive behaviour support. We are
fortunate to have at our disposal a great deal of knowledge
concerning challenging behaviour. The people who paid the highest
price in gathering such knowledge were often not professionals or
researchers: the lives of children and adults with IDD or autistic
adults and children and their families are littered with tales of broken
promises and hurt as often as glowing tales of achievement. They
have learned the hard way.
There is a growing expectation for families (and those who know
the person well) to be an inherent part of searching for an
understanding of challenging behaviour, as well as being a central
pillar of our attempts to craft solutions. It is not always the case that
the views of families are taken seriously, and the knowledge of direct
support staff is often ignored: the voices of professionals tend to
dominate conversations, their views tend to dominate narratives
about challenging behaviour, they speak over the experiences of
others. This book suggests that effective behavioural support
features ‘dispersed leadership’, meaning no individual voice
dominates. Dispersed leadership includes people in decisions
regardless of qualifications or status.
Leadership is not about those with specialist knowledge telling
others what to do. Leadership involves a good deal of listening to
those who do the actual work or those who experience support. No
one is voiceless even if they do not speak. A good leader knows
behaviour is communication and so they listen with their eyes as
well as their ears. They know being ‘voiceless’ does not trap people;
they know Serviceland is often poor at listening. The poor treatment
too many people using Serviceland receive is not due to a lack of
voice, but a lack of power.
A good leader makes a safe space for people to share their
perspectives, and a good leader shares power and decision-making.
Effective leadership guides rather than tells and it enables people
who know how to get on with things to go get on with them. A good
leader is usually a practice leader – someone who leads by example,
demonstrates what works, explains why, and so teaches through
doing.
It is not leadership to pop in on someone’s life for twenty
minutes, make a few suggestions in a letter or report, and then take
no responsibility for when things go wrong, or take credit for when
things go right. It is still too common for busy professionals to pass
briefly through people’s lives without meeting the person they
encounter.
 Several years ago Dave Hingsburger – a Canadian activist and
teacher – asked a class of professionals how many children or adults
with disabilities they knew through working with them. We all
plucked a figure from the air. He asked us again. How many did we
know? I am not the brightest of people but even I suspected there
was more to his question than met the ear. So I actively listened as
Dave asked us the same question for the third time.1 The number of
people with disabilities that I had come to know as opposed to
merely worked with was shamefully small. It’s the difference
between encountering a person or meeting them.
We encounter many people but we know only a few: to know
someone is to be shared with – their preferences, their views, the
thinking and feeling aspects of themselves.
To meet someone other than ourselves is an act of profound
bravery. When you meet a person you discover what is important to
them but you need to be worthy and useful to the people you
encounter in order for them to trust you enough so they share. Only
then do you meet others, only then do you begin to know others.
That knowing is a privilege available only to those who invest time in
taking the person seriously (for more information, see Hingsburger,
1996, 1998).
This book encourages readers to meet those labelled with IDD or
autistic people for real. It teaches us about the importance of
remaining authentic and genuine in our attempts to get to know
people. Their stories are not about us. Even if our training and
status makes us someone considered an authority, we are a minor
character in a story concerning them.
To not listen to people wealthy in knowledge about what is
helpful in supporting a person is akin to visiting a foreign nation
without an understanding of the language, culture or customs: we
place ourselves at immediate disadvantage. To find our way about it
benefits us to find local guides. A good leader listens hard to local
knowledge. A good leader doesn’t feel obliged to be in charge.

Something Like A Soapbox

When I first started working alongside people with IDD and autistic
people whose behaviour was considered challenging, I was
impressed with how much I knew, and I hoped others would be
equally impressed. In hindsight, it is amazing how little insight I had
about how little I knew. That did not stop me communicating (or at
least broadcasting) a great deal about how little I knew to practically
anyone who would listen, or who at least were not fast enough to
escape.
In those days there was an emphasis on simply stopping what
we then called problem behaviour.2 We placed the problem of
behaviour in the person (‘she has problem behaviour’), though
where she kept it heaven only knew. In time we began to speak
instead of challenging behaviour, implying the issue was often for
those around the person. Those supporting others were rarely
taught about the benefits of communication or working to grow
rapport or to support someone to get the life they wished for or
needed. We did not understand challenging behaviour was both a
complaint and a symptom, even though many parents and support
staff knew this fundamental truth. They had learned lessons from
their experiences and their loving a child or adult whose behaviour
was often confounding to us, clear to them.
Without such insights, people made use of abusive and punishing
techniques. In part this was due to people with IDD or autistic
people not being considered full partners: how they felt did not
seem to matter, what they did was the only thing we counted. The
things that they did were seen as products of their differences, their
pathologies. Such differences were considered as making them less
worthy of being listened to or taken seriously. In this way many
professionals reflected the general zeitgeist: society preferred to not
see disability because society was not about diversity but about
fitting in. God help you if you did not fit, because society wouldn’t.
Those institutions set up to care for those people at the edges of
society (the churches, the hospitals, the children’s homes) were
often most ardent in their use of pain and punishment; but even in
purgatory, voices were raised that questioned what was done in the
name of science or moral correction.
At the heart of society’s terrible error was a simple truth, laid
bare in report after report concerning hospital scandals: we often did
things to people, not with them. People who needed support
received it in exchange for their dignity; they paid for intervention by
surrendering little bits of their humanity.
We didn’t notice because we didn’t need to heed their voices. We
were too busy measuring the things we considered important to
actually notice the voids in their lives. We did not record the families
and places they mourned. We did record behaviour, bowel
movements and medication. We did not think to measure loneliness
or heartache.
When a person labelled with IDD or an autistic person was
admitted to a long-stay hospital or other service they often were
obliged to leave behind their family, their identity and their
friendships at the door. We had new identities pre-designed and
waiting; we had new words and new expectations. They wore the
new clothes provided for them by the powerful and were expected
to behave as patients, not people. Even the words they began to use
to define themselves were borrowed from the language of the
people in charge. For example, people would refer to themselves as
‘high grades’ in line with the supposed ‘level of ability’ determined by
assessment. People became less human, more a number. This
dehumanising appeared to give greater power to professionals to do
as they wished. For too many people using services, dignity and
respect were things that happened to other people.
An institution is a place but also a way of thinking. An institution
boxes and processes people, it seeks to strip people of their
identities in exchange for prescriptive definitions about who and
what they are. An institution can house many hundreds of people
but sometimes only two or three. We foolishly believed closing large
institutions and moving people (often without their consent) on to
smaller community services would solve the problem of
institutionalisation. But we have cleverly managed to replicate how
large institutions worked in these smaller community-based homes –
customs and practices continue though the net curtains are cleaner.
Too often smaller bastions of institutionalising thinking and practice
have been created, and lionised as examples of good practice.
Institutions are alive and well because the thinking that produces
them remains rife.
Practically all hospital scandal inquiries that have shone a light
into abusive practices in the UK have concluded the same sordid
lessons over the last fifty years:
• Dehumanising practices are nurtured not by bad apples but
by bad systems that allow the rot to be normalised and go
unquestioned.
• An institution is run for the benefit of people working there,
not living there.
• People living in institutions might as well be things.

In this regard it matters not the size of the building: being unheard
in a large institution is the same as being unheard in a small
community home, save for the lack of secret places harbouring
safety and privacy. There is no place to hide in a small home.3
Whilst we have moved on a good deal and the acceptability of
controlling responses to challenging behaviour is lessening, this is by
no means a battle won. Travesties such as punishing consequences
to challenging behaviour, the horror of children and adults being
placed miles from their families in institutions, and utterly avoidable
deaths are still regularly reported.
In 2011, in the UK, the BBC documentary series Panorama
revealed the abuse of autistic people and people with IDD resident
in a private hospital called Winterbourne View. The hospital was part
of an organisation providing care for vulnerable people while making
a profit for shareholders. Following a criminal investigation,
prosecutions were made. As a result, those controlling policy sought
to move people whose behaviour was most challenging away from
such large congregate settings as hospitals and assessment units, to
smaller and more local services. The government initiative
Transforming Care promised to ensure most people being supported
in hospitals were found better support elsewhere, and the NHS,
which often funded such private hospital placements, proclaimed a
need for homes not hospitals. But promises are easier to say than
deliver. After half a dozen years of investing in endless assessing and
subsidising rhetoric, some people’s lives have been enriched through
escaping hospital, but for too many autistic people and those with
IDD not much has changed. The Transforming Care initiative
appears to be no more than continuing indifference: people remain
miles from home and their voices continue to be unheard.

This Book
This book will not change your life, but aims to provoke thinking.
That thinking might change how you understand challenging
behaviour – and that can change lives for the better.
Had I written this book thirty years ago it would have been very
different. It would have emphasised behaviour analytic approaches
and de-emphasised relationships and quality of life. It would have
been more about data than people’s stories and more about the
technology of behavioural science than about choice.
Now we know the benefits of listening to the voices and
behaviour of the children and adults we serve, there is no longer any
excuse for blocking our ears. When I work with people whose
behaviour challenges, I have learned, primarily, to turn up, shut up
and listen. Like many, I’ve learned to listen with my eyes. Most of
the people I know are better non-verbal communicators than verbal.
To listen watchfully sounds a little odd, but it cuts to the heart of the
work.
The old default of harvesting data before anything else has been
amended by experiences accruing from the benefits of listening to
people’s stories of their lives. Now I ask about relationships and well-
being before antecedents and contingency data. Now I ask what’s
bugging them, not about schedules of reinforcement.
When at times this book questions and criticises common or
robotic practices, remember that I myself have engaged in unhelpful
and actively bad habits at times.4 Invariably such moments coincided
with the demands of my job but that’s no defence. Putting my own
interests first may be logical in some situations, but it means other
people come second. John O’Brien – of whom, much more later –
writes that a person-centred practitioner lives and works in the
tensions between the individual they are supporting and the
incessant demands of organisations to deliver quantity not quality.
Being person centred means we are caught between the sea of
faces and the kingdom of numbers that is Serviceland (O’Brien,
2002).
I am in recovery from the kingdom of numbers, however, being
in a kind of rehab for behaviourists. Each day provides opportunities
for me to be better at being more rounded and more person centred
not only in my work, but in my whole life.
This book shows that if we know where challenging behaviour
comes from we may feel more able to confront people who say it
comes out of nowhere. There is always a predictor that challenging
behaviour is likely to appear, usually obvious warning signs, too.
Whether we see these or not is the issue.
If we know why challenging behaviour keeps happening, we
might be better placed to do something constructive about it. If we
know when challenging behaviour is likely, we can work to amend
those moments. If we know what follows challenging behaviour, we
can find easier ways for the person to achieve the same outcome in
a safer manner. These approaches may well enable the person not
to challenge quite so often or so intensely.
There are always alternatives we can support the person (and
ourselves) to learn. We cannot guarantee to stop challenging
behaviour – humans don’t unlearn – but we can make it the least
effective skill the person has learned. We can help make challenging
behaviour obsolete, or less impactful, or less significant by
supporting the person to find new ways of achieving their very
reasonable desires as part of a life they enjoy. This book is an
informal (and occasionally funny and often sad) guide to doing just
this.
Who Shaped the Thoughts that Made this Book?
We all have heroes – people who have given us pause for thought
and so shaped our thinking. The best ideas in this book are crafted
from the work of others, though the errors I claim for myself. The
American psychologist Herb Lovett once gave a speech long ago – in
the ancient 1990s – that suggested Serviceland had difficulty in
learning: though they tend to be filled with learned people, human
service organisations often do not learn from the feedback provided
by people using services. People that challenge may be difficult to
serve but it does not follow we are obliged to degrade them by not
giving authority to their experiences, pain and gifts.
Lovett widened the debate about how best to support those
whose behaviour challenges us. He spoke of community as not
merely a place but a way of being connected with people.
Community is not a place, he argued, but a way of life. Lovett dared
to speak of the need for a more compassionate application of
scientific knowledge. And he dared to speak of love.
Lovett was an activist who questioned how behavioural
approaches were being used. He suggested it is all too easy to be
blind to the person or their lives when seeking to reduce challenging
behaviour. He argued the use of aversive and punishing techniques,
an over-reliance on restraints and medication, and intervening
without knowing about the person, are self-defeating and inhuman.
He argued we have created services for what people are not, not
who they are. Basing intervention on a diagnosis and not a person is
similarly unhelpful. The price of such situations is paid not by
managers or commissioners or services but through the denuded
experiences of many people trying to live their lives in or through
services. Lovett’s point is that by focusing purely on behaviour it is
all too easy to miss the big things that are important to a person,
such as living a good life. By focusing on data we blind ourselves to
the equally important human perspective.
A graph does not describe a person, and scatter plots are merely
ink on paper. These things inform our practice. We reduce a person
to a diagnosis or a problem and lose sight of the human if we fail to
consider broader quality-of-life issues. Supporting people whose
behaviour challenges the system was for Lovett not a clinical issue,
more a social justice issue (Lovett, 1996).
There is plenty of research to show that having few friends or
limited social networks can be debilitating (e.g., Forrester-Jones et
al., 2006). Likewise, not keeping life interesting and active, not being
person centred, is a road we really do not want to travel if we are
committed to good support (Mansell and Beadle-Brown, 2012). But
no matter the quality of the organisation, if support provision does
not continually renew the support it provides it will deteriorate to
resemble something like an institution: a factory churning out clinical
misery. Someone using services might value choice and voice – and
the unpredictability (the freedom) this might produce – as much as
how their support staff are efficiently organised. If human services
paid as much attention to the accomplishment of an enjoyable life as
they do to other issues, many people would be better supported,
including staff and parents (European Intellectual Disability Research
Network, 2003).
David Pitonyak works to help people support more effectively
those who challenge; he argues loneliness is the only real disability
as it sets us apart. Pitonyak wonders if by reaching for ‘independent
living’ we are not at times inadvertently creating islands of loneliness
(Pitonyak, 2010b). His work, emphasising belonging and partnership
alongside robust evidenced-based interventions, continues to inspire
and will feature throughout this small book. Pitonyak argues that a
crucial and often overlooked aspect of how we respond to
challenging behaviour involves acting to ensure we consider the
welfare of those supporting people, too: do support workers and
parents or siblings have their own support plans, Pitonyak wonders,
and if not, why not?
Dependence on support services means many disabled people
rely on others. Relying on others makes it immensely important that
services are competent at delivering what the person requires. The
question of competence is a complex one from the outset; the first
problem is who defines competent provision: the accountants, the
commissioners or the people living in services? If it is the former
two, then managerialism wins and the human can become lost in a
field of financial figures and bottom lines. Human lives cannot be run
as businesses. Pitonyak, along with many others, argues for both
good ‘clinical’ skills and inclusion of the views of people living in
services.
Humans tend to be safer and have richer experiences the greater
the number of people with widely different views they have in their
lives. Often most of the people involved in the life of a person with
IDD or autistic individuals are paid to be there. In the UK, many
people with impactful differences are living lives in a market
economy that views them not as customers but as economic units
and assets. John O’Brien wrote powerfully that discovering the
person within the myths is crucial, and that what matters is the
accomplishment of a good quality of life (O’Brien, 1987). Influenced
by the work of John and his wife Connie Lyle O’Brien, this book is
aimed in part at helping us remember that those who challenge us
are fully human first, that those challenges are no excuse not to do
our best with and by people, and that people are not merely
resources to help grow a pension fund for chief executive officers.

‘What Happened to Learning Disability? What is Autism?’

This book is about challenging behaviour, but given that behaviour
does not occur unless there is someone to behave, and given that
one cannot understand behaviour unless one understands the
person and their contexts, and given that autism and intellectual
disabilities are significant influences on people, let us define some
terms.
Anyone encountering the term learning disabilities might be
forgiven for thinking this group of people are unable to learn. This is
not the case. People with learning disabilities are quite able to learn
if given skilled teaching, though it might take more time and more
opportunities. Learning difficulties – from an international
perspective – is applied to those with specific learning issues such as
dyslexia. So to help international understanding, the UK is adopting
the term IDD. This is the term I will use.
 Whilst I remain uneasy with the word disability, personally much
preferring difference, IDD is understood internationally, and it shows
more precisely what we are talking about: an impactful difference in
skills or learning present prior to adulthood, often requiring ongoing
support. Intellectual disability means a measurable intelligence (IQ)
below 70 (though IQ is a contested concept and is difficult to
measure with certainty), and the need for support in some areas of
life. To help organise support, different ‘severities’ of IDD are
identified. Those with mild IDD often enjoy a good quality of
independent life with minimal support. The more profoundly a
person is impacted by IDD, the greater their reliance on the abilities
and sensibilities of others.
Genetic or biological issues often cause IDD, but social factors
are also important: this is true with regard to challenging behaviour,
also. We can attribute a child’s behaviour to their condition and
easily ignore the fact they are simply unhappy or have toothache.
This diagnostic overshadowing means we only see the most obvious
issue, missing the elephant in the room. We need to ensure we do
not think of the person through the dimensions of their diagnosis.
It’s most helpful to think of any IDD as not determining what people
can or cannot achieve.
Disability, however we think of it, not only shapes our thinking
and behaviour, but it also shapes what we do and how we respond
to people so labelled. Knowing about possible or probable
‘characteristics’ can help our understanding, providing it does not
blind us to the uniqueness of the individual. There are some things I
am fairly good at (like cooking, like swimming, like avoiding writing
this book for ten years) and other things I am utterly terrible at5
(staying calm about things that matter to me, dancing the tarantella
to Tom Waits, not asking questions, eating less – this list is endless).
So you might say I have what we call a ‘spiky profile of skills’. I
cannot dance too well but I can waddle with gusto. But there are
always alternatives to dancing. We humans are as mottled in our
varying abilities as a forest floor in autumn. We are each a complex
mosaic of abilities. And those abilities are enabled by where we live
and whom we’re with. This does not mean those of us with specific
issues do not require specific skilled support. It simply means cut-out
solutions will not be as beneficial as individualised solutions. Cut-out
solutions have their appeal to those organising things, but the end
result is often compromise. The average legroom in a car or airline
does not suit my particular height, let me attest.
In terms of autism, I adhere to current convention, namely the
identity-first use of ‘autistic’, hence my writing of an autistic child or
adult. I shall be writing more about autism as the book continues,
but autism threads its way through the whole. Autism means
different things to different people but most accept it is a difference
in neurology that results in autistic people usually experiencing the
world in a way unfamiliar to neurotypicals – that is, non-autistic
people. Autism is not lesser, autism is not disorder, autism is
difference. Autistic people often experience the world as it is
whereas non-autistic people see the world they wish to.

What is Challenging Behaviour?

Challenging behaviour is any behaviour that puts at risk well-being,
health and cultural norms, and that has an impact on relationships
or status. It can annoy you somewhat, or endanger life. Challenging
behaviours are impactful. Challenging behaviour is a summary label
for a myriad of behaviours that hurt or harm. We might find some or
all of the behaviours below challenging, depending on where the
person is, who the person is, how often they happen, how intensely
they occur, and our ability to understand why it happens:
• swearing
• screaming
• hitting others
• kicking others
• pulling hair
• hurting themselves
 • eating or consuming harmful things
• running away
• withdrawing from activities
• ignoring someone.

It is often the case that the person behaving in these ways may not
intend to cause harm, may not even think of their behaviour as
challenging at all. They may consider it self-determination, self-
preservation, or self-expression. They may not consider it at all.
Challenging behaviour then is both very real and a ‘social
construction’, in that behaviour is said to be challenging when people
agree it is. A young man’s smoking and drinking is not a problem for
him or his friends, but it might well be considered challenging by
teetotal non-smoking neighbours or the class teacher, and his doctor
might want to tell him about future risks, too. The young man might
well consider everybody’s advice to him unbearably challenging and
harmful to his sense of independent identity.
Just because behaviour is socially unacceptable in one place
(removing clothing in the frozen-food aisle of a supermarket) does
not mean it is unacceptable in another place (getting ready for bed).
The impact on cultural norms influences whether others classify
behaviour as challenging. But here is the issue: who decides? And
what happens when you are so labelled? Can you appeal such a
decision?
Even when a person who does not know you classifies your
behaviour as challenging, that behaviour remains meaningful for
you. No matter how unusual or impactful, the behaviour is adaptive
– it has an effect and is fit for the situation you find yourself in. It
will continue to be used until other behaviours are learned. And even
if alternative behaviour is learned, the person may choose the
behaviour that is most effective – often, the most impactful.
This can result in the meaning of challenging behaviour
becoming contested and politicised: a young person harming
themselves may be diagnosed with a ‘psychiatric disorder’ by a
psychiatrist, a ‘behavioural disorder’ by a psychologist, or as
possessing a ‘coping mechanism’ by others. Challenging behaviour is
often all things to all people, though the most powerful people tend
to write the historic notes that follow the person throughout their
lives. Such diagnoses litter the histories of a vulnerable child or adult
in the same way plastic litters the ocean: both cause harm, both
drag you down, both can become part of you, and both can kill.
The Challenging Behaviour Foundation (CBF) is the leading UK
charity supporting families of those with IDD whose behaviour
challenges those around them. The CBF estimates that in the UK
alone up to 30,000 individuals with severe IDD show challenging
behaviour. Challenging behaviour is a significant feature of the lives
of many more children with moderate or mild IDD. It has a
significant cost in terms of resources, time, exhaustion and
happiness. Challenging behaviour is a significant element of parental
concern and the work of professionals the world over. Wherever we
go, there it is.

What Causes Challenging Behaviour?

There are a great number of factors that might contribute to
challenging behaviour, some of which are more important than
others, depending on the individual. We know there is incredibly
strong evidence that much challenging behaviour is learned and
maintained by simple reinforcement. Much of this book addresses
these ecological factors. The reason we often look at the ecology –
the places and people around the individual – to account for
challenging behaviour, is because the fit between the person and
those around them is often vital in working out why challenging
behaviour happens. If there are conflicts, we are likely to see
challenging behaviour.
Environmental factors that should be considered and amended
include:
• access to activities, food and people the individual prefers
• being involved in decisions and having choice
 • having a life with structure and predictability without
routines becoming institutionalised (we need routines not
regimes)
• the communication abilities and opportunities available
• the noise levels, type of lights, how busy and unpredictable a
place is
• having people who have realistic expectations and know the
person well: evidence of trust and good rapport.

There are also factors that are internal to the person. Medical issues,
such as illnesses or pain, can make us less tolerant of things we
might otherwise be able to cope with (my family know I have a PhD
in Grumpy when suffering near-terminal Man Flu). Ascertaining if the
person is in pain may be problematic because sometimes the person
cannot tell us directly, but we can pick up clues from changes in
behaviour. A full medical examination is usually helpful to eliminate
such possibilities: a person may not be pathologically pre-disposed
to self-harm but might have toothache. Some forms of genetic or
physiological conditions can impact behaviour. Therefore, health
checks and monitoring of well-being are the first step to
understanding what influences challenging behaviour.
Other personal factors include emotional or mental health. How
we feel and think matters a good deal, and influences how we act.
Our sense of self, our sense of belonging in a place or among a
network of equal relationships, our ability to communicate, and our
needs and desires, all combine to influence our behaviour. That is
why throughout this book I urge us to keep a look-out for elephants
in the room before calling on behavioural assessments.
If you can ensure good communication, an interesting life and
basic physiological and psychological well-being, you tend to find
you have facilitated a reduction in challenging behaviours without
the need for other support.
This has led me to conclude that all too often challenging
behaviour is complaining about something not working in the
person’s life. We should arrange what the person needs for a happy
life rather than reprimand them for challenging behaviour:
challenging behaviour may be the only language they have that is
sure to make you hear.

Why Does Challenging Behaviour Persist?

Any behaviour that works in getting or avoiding things will continue.
If you are working with someone whose behaviour challenges then
that behaviour is being maintained (you will have heard the term
reinforced at some point: this is what it means). A child outgrows
her ‘terrible twos’ because she learns new things when her parents
learn new ways of teaching and being with her. She does not so
much grow up, we grow her. The screaming reduces when talking
begins, but only if her parents enable her talking. If the child’s needs
are not met by being shown more effective ways of achieving them,
the screaming persists.
I know you and I were both saint-like teenagers and above
reproach, but those others were just terrible, weren’t they? The
reason they stopped behaving so terribly is because they learned
alternative ways of thinking and doing (‘Learning is growing up,’ one
young person confided to me). But until we learn new ways of doing
things we will continue doing what works – be it screaming, hitting
or a tantrum – but the good news is we can teach and learn new
tricks.
When someone we know ignores our words, when we are
unheard and unloved, when our pain goes unnoticed, we will be
more likely to demonstrate those tantrum behaviours we acquired at
the age of two. Having a wide repertoire of behaviours to call on can
come in handy in a tight fix. Having a range of behaviours available
for common situations is the Swiss Army Knife for humans.
Many children and adults with IDD have struggled to learn new
ways of doing things and many people supporting them have
struggled to learn how to teach. Old habits die hard, especially when
they work, especially when there are few alternatives. For example,
if I have learned people will not listen when I ask but will listen
when I scream, my screaming is reinforced by people listening, and
screaming will remain useful for me. So is behaviour a failure of an
ability to learn, or a failure of our ability to teach?
We need to remember we all once had to learn everything we
have forgotten we know: to express ourselves, to ask, to drive, to
write, to sing about referees not divine mediators, to read quirky
books about challenging behaviour. Expecting a child to know
intrinsically how to behave in a certain way is not going to help that
child’s learning. We create and craft our children every day. And
what we teach our children, they show as adults. Challenging
behaviour can last a long time when few alternatives exist.
Challenging behaviour can last a long time when it is reinforced.

‘Just Reprimand People Who Challenge; That Worked for

Me!’
Did it though? We all benefit from boundaries and knowing right
from wrong, helpful from unhelpful behaviour, but life is more
complex than we sometimes admit. There are times when the rules
of appropriateness are determined by who we are rather than what
we do. Telling people off for their behaviour when it is the only
behaviour they know is like criticising a New Zealand five-year-old
for not speaking a Kashubian dialect unknown outside a village in
northern Poland: obscure and unhelpful.
Besides, punishment is counter-productive, even if we ignore the
ethics of someone big or powerful harming someone small and
powerless. If a child is often fearful of being criticised or corrected,
what happens to that child’s sense of self? Humans have this funny
knack of learning even when there is no formal teaching going on,
and early accidental experiences can stay with us for a lifetime.
Some of us might learn to welcome being punished – because any
form of attention is attention, even if it is intended to be a telling-off
– and do we really want to create a human who enjoys punishment?
That is a gift that will keep on giving through the generations.
We can easily skew young humans by withholding praise, clear
communication and boundaries, and we can scar them by drowning
them in unthinking condemnation, fake praise and real hurt. I have
worked with too many people whose only form of a hug is known,
colloquially, as physical restraint, and too many people who enjoy
hurting the feelings of others.
Too many lives have been twisted into cruel shapes by
punishment. I humbly believe there has been a mis-translation of
behavioural science when applied to the real world and suggest that
if we use the rod we will spoil the child.
We want to suffer the child, not make the child suffer. One thing
is worth considering though: we cannot blame our own authoritarian
tendencies on God (Blaug, 2000).

What Is Positive Behaviour Support?

Positive behaviour support (PBS) is an umbrella term that describes
approaches to constructively understand and respond to challenging
behaviour. By constructive, we mean approaches that focus on
growing new ways of behaving without resorting to using aversive or
punishing techniques. PBS will be referred to throughout this book.
PBS grew out of dissatisfaction at what was custom and practice:
an over-reliance on aversive ways of dealing with challenging
behaviour. Aversive approaches often dehumanised people, and
included:
• physically restraining people
• hurting people
• using medication to dull people
• threatening or scaring people
• keeping people isolated
• taking away things that matter to the person
• managing behaviour rather than supporting people.

Many interventions focused on doing things following an incident – a

little like designing a shoddy stable door long after the horse has
bolted. It was very common for people whose behaviour challenged
to be placed in ‘time-out’ – places or spaces where they were not
given attention, or were isolated from the things they liked or
needed. PBS demands people ask more about time-in than time-out.
PBS asks us to consider how we can build skills rather than punish
people.
When people ask me what PBS is, I suggest it is about catching
people being good or doing well, and reinforcing what is helpful,
rather than punishing what is not. If we paid more attention to
people when they are not challenging, a lot of upset could be
avoided. Even more can be avoided if we teach people they simply
do not need to challenge to get what they need or avoid what they
do not.
And if only we created spaces that were designed around people,
rather than fitting them in to what we have pre-assembled, life
would be far easier and probably far less expensive.
There are many definitions of PBS, but most include the
following:
• an improvement in lifestyle (supporting the person to live a
life they prefer)
• use of functional assessment to identify why behaviour is
happening
• use of many interventions that, like a mosaic, when seen
together, make a picture of coherent support
• making the place the person lives fit for them (we call these
ecological changes)
• setting things up to avoid conflicts (we call these antecedent
interventions)
• teaching new skills to people using and providing support
• enriching a person’s life with lots of activities, people and
things the person enjoys
• not using aversive or punishing strategies
 • a long-term perspective: PBS wants to fix the future by fixing
today
• the voices of people using support are as important as
others
• PBS makes use of various approaches to help support
people, for example person-centred planning, psychological,
nursing and other perspectives (MacDonald and McGill,
2013).

PBS grew from the blending of values-led approaches and applied

behaviour analysis (ABA). This blending of science and person-
centred approaches is at times uneasy (Kincaid, 2017), but including
wider perspectives has enriched ABA. For families and people using
services, PBS simply seeks to deliver what the person needs for a
good life in a non-humiliating and non-harming manner (Carr et al.,
1999).
An assessment service that excludes person-centred approaches
or does not include communication or life-enhancement, an
environment that uses punishment, that does not feature
partnership working with family and friends, that restricts access to
the people, places and things a person needs, is not a place using
PBS, no matter what it claims. It is more likely to be an inefficient
old-fashioned and discredited place.
Sometimes there are easy clues to the charade: if a place refers
to itself as ‘a unit’, you can be pretty sure the minds that designed it
have simply added a façade of ‘PBS’ over the top of their disquieting
archaeology and institutional working. They have simply rebadged
old thinking and practices.
No doubt you have heard of ‘fool’s gold’: let me assure you there
is also ‘fool’s PBS’. It glitters and appears to sparkle but the shine
soon rubs off for the people living there. It is easy to claim PBS, but
truly hard work to do it well.

What Is Quality of Life?

Quality of life is a subjective experience. What makes my life
enjoyable and worthwhile is likely different from what enriches
yours. There are a good many serviceable definitions of quality of
life, but I think of it as people enjoying interesting active lives within
equitable relationships in places they like.
Too often people with IDD do not experience the opportunities to
live the same good quality of life afforded to their non-disabled
peers. They encounter barriers from systems intended to support
them: they experience attitudes that limit them, and they face
poverty, discrimination and powerlessness. Those with IDD whose
behaviour challenges others are frequently particularly short-
changed when it comes to the things that often make a life worth
living.
We often see quality of life referred to as ‘QoL’. Acronyms are
useful in journals and books but not in real life: acronyms have the
ring of jargon and are a shortcut in thinking. In real life, when
speaking about it or contributing to it, it is best to spell out ‘quality
of life’ in its full, explicit and colourful detail. The same is true when
working to improve it: there are no shortcuts. Do not skimp on
quality of life: it is the job of services to deliver it. Acronyms and
shorthand will simply short-change quality of life, and not do it
justice.
John O’Brien suggests that we would do well to consider five
important principles when gauging whether someone has a good
quality of life (O’Brien, 1987). These questions are as relevant today
as ever, but we are perhaps as far away from making the delivery of
a quality of life our central mission as ever.
• Can we demonstrate that our work is respectful to the
choices of the person? (If the person cannot clearly tell us,
can we interpret their actions as communicating whether
what we hope we do is what they prefer?)
• Does our work to support the person actively connect them
with the local community?
 • Does our work to support the person ensure they are not at
the periphery of community or otherwise set apart, but part
of the community?
• A person who is increasing their skills is a person growing
future options, and O’Brien asks us to ensure we organise
ways to help the individual grow their competence.
• Do we, O’Brien wonders, respect the dignity of the person,
not only in small matters, but also in things that are more
significant to the person?

Onwards
This book draws together thirty years of experience and current
research in an informal, entertaining and informed manner. It
presents situations that are sad and funny and demonstrate the hard
work required to support those whose behaviour challenges. We will
go searching for invisible elephants before encountering battling
robots and humans. Along the way we will stand upon soapboxes,
rage against inequality, make mention of compassion, and explore
simple ways to interpret the messages behind challenging behaviour.
All before suggesting clear ways for developing support strategies
without the need to roll around the floor in despair. All without use
of a safety net.

1 Active listening means taking not only what is said at face value – a literal
interpretation – but also what is meant. To listen actively we decode words or
behaviour into meaning. A person may say or appear upset, but why? It
incorporates careful listening and watching, but only in preparation of taking
action to support the person in a manner that shows we are very much
present with them. An autistic young man I spent time with would frown after
a time together. The frown meant to me that I was speaking too fast, too
unclearly. His behaviour showed me I needed to slow down, give him space
and time to think.
2 We considered it a problem to be overcome or eliminated rather than
understood; challenging behaviour couldn’t teach anything to those of us who
 seemed to know so much.
3 For a useful, nuanced and salutary ethnography of what it is like to work in a
community home that is almost like an institution, see Levinson, 2010. Some
things, it turns out, are hard to change.
4 I’m not proud of this, but reflecting upon my errors has helped me become a
more person-centred practitioner. Being reflective and person centred means I
always have a handy pin to make use of in order to pop any inflated opinion
of myself.
5 Though it begs the question, who judges and to whose standards?
 CHAPTER 2

Manifesto
A Bill of Rights (and Wrongs)

People with agendas and biases have written every book you have
ever read. Some writers are more explicit about their biases than
others, and so it seems best to acknowledge my own.
1. It is your right to have people with expertise support
decisions that help you. Those with the most expertise about
you are you, your family or friends, the people who know
you best, the people you trust. Professionals must work in
partnership with such experts in order to develop an
understanding of what you need and want. It is wrong to
think others have a quick solution. Avoid the discourse that
says hospitals or assessment units are the solution to all
woes: they are not. Locking people away is not a solution.
Too often such places are the insidious problem whispering
for us to abdicate our abilities to cope. It is utterly feasible to
provide a great quality of life and good support for those
with impactful challenging behaviour in ordinary homes and
schools. It takes hard work and imagination: we need to be
better at organising commitment to provide what research
has shown is more than possible. It can be done because it
is being done all over the world. Do not let others steal your
agency or undermine your belief in your ability to work with
what is in front of you.
2. It is right to face up to the real difficulties you face, though
unhelpful to focus solely on challenging behaviour. We
should forgive ourselves because we all tend to respond to
anything that is surprising, bizarre or just plain disgusting.
Rather than fix behaviour, fix the life, then often the
behaviour becomes less of an issue. Reframe the focus away
from the behaviour. Rather than gathering information only
for challenging behaviour, gather it for the good things that
happen, or near misses – when we avoid challenging
behaviour. Work out why good things happen and learn to
do those things more often. Keep a balanced view. The
reality is a person’s challenging behaviour is likely to
consume a small percentage of their time. The final
important element of this principle is that we never fix the
behaviour to tolerate a broken environment. What value is
our work if it does not contribute to the person’s quality of
life?
3. It is right to wonder what challenging behaviour is telling us.
We can do this by conducting a person-centred functional
assessment, or we can use other methods to listen to what
is possibly meant by the behaviour. Challenging behaviour is
often a complaint that despite our best efforts we are not
quite doing what the person needs. It is hard to hear such
complaints, especially at 3am when we are tired, but if
challenging behaviour is happening, it is being reinforced
and has meaning for the person. Let us listen better and
work out what the clues are telling us, and more importantly,
unflinchingly respond positively in ways that do not eliminate
the future.
4. It is right to base support on your preferences and needs. It
is wrong to receive support that is not person centred and
designed to meet the unique preferences, gifts and needs of
the person. Fit support around the person, do not parachute
the person into existing ideas or places. Take a human view
 of humans in distress. Behavioural science helps our work
but it is not the whole of our work.
5. It is right to use rights. Sometimes it takes the work of many
to enable the rights of one person or a family. Rights need to
be pursued. People whose behaviour is considered
challenging have the same human rights as everybody else:
they are full members of our diverse and vibrant society.
Families of children whose behaviour challenges are first and
foremost families. Families have rights and should expect
advice tailored to their own culture and requirements. It is
wrong not to challenge things that are unhelpful, and we
need to stop pretending every service or parent or
professional is good. Nobody is perfect and everyone can
contribute to solutions.
6. It is right to see challenging behaviour as just behaviour, not
evidence of a pathological problem. Challenging behaviour
happens. Challenging behaviour grows out of small moments
but can escalate quickly. Before we know it, challenging
behaviour can become habitual – it seems so much an
inherent part of the person it is easy to believe it is not
learned. We each have the capacity to learn new ways of
avoiding things or getting the things we need or want.
Knowing what influences challenging behaviour is key to
knowing how to pre-empt, support, respond or teach
alternatives for the person. If we do not know why a given
behaviour is happening, we might easily respond in a way
that makes it worse. Finally, try not to take the behaviour
personally. (It is unlikely the person is acting as they do
simply to annoy you.)
7. It is right to involve families and for families to receive high-
quality advice and active support. It is wrong to make
families feel inadequate and unqualified to speak on behalf
of the children they love. Some of the most insightful views
and solutions come from those paid the least – support staff,
 teaching assistants – or even nothing at all (parents). It is
right to work in partnership with people, even if you think
someone is an utter arsehole.1 (Arseholes may hold
invaluable knowledge and insights, though the manner in
which they express themselves is often difficult to stomach.)
Remember, even arseholes have their uses (Sutton, 2010).
8. It is right to challenge any approach that dehumanises
others. It is right to challenge discrimination arising from
challenging behaviour. Good support avoids punishment,
good support builds skills such as communication, good
support grows opportunities and belonging, and good
support increases quality of life whilst decreasing loneliness
and isolation. Good support writes new stories with people
and questions severe reputations. Good support enables
people to write their own stories.
9. Finally, A Brief Bill of Wrongs:
− It is wrong to not have a shot at a good life.
− It is wrong to have things taken away, to be hurt or
made to feel unsafe.
− It is wrong to be made to feel bad about yourself.
− It is wrong for others to arbitrarily control the things you
value.
− It is wrong not be involved in your life decisions.
− It is wrong to have your human rights revoked.
− It is wrong to not fix unsuitable environments.
− It is wrong to be told you cannot learn.
− It is wrong not to be able to contribute.
− It is wrong not to challenge challenging behaviour: it is
wrong to accept it as inevitable.
 KEY POINTS FROM MANIFESTO: A BILL OF RIGHTS (AND WRONGS)
• Human rights do not stop because challenging behaviour begins.
• It is right to be supported in person-centred and evidence-based ways.
• It is right to be consulted about how support is delivered.

1 If you are offended by inclusion of the A word then I can only apologise.
When working for change in how children and adults with IDD whose
behaviour challenges are understood and supported, I suspect far more
offensive experiences will be encountered, such as exclusion, discrimination,
sexual, financial, emotional and physical abuse, over-medication, restraint and
indifference. Judicious use of a profanity is the least of the challenges we
face.
 CHAPTER 3

Working Together
or Pulling Apart?

Coming together to discuss issues openly is an opportunity to share

experiences, perspectives and solutions. No single person or group
holds all knowledge. Challenging behaviour is difficult to deal with
when you are alone: this is everything to do with the uncertainty
such behaviour causes. The two following ‘letters’ illustrate the
common frustrations that over the years I’ve heard expressed by
professionals and parents. The only way forward is to work together.

About Professionals: A Letter to Families

Dear Family,

I have no magic wand. I’m a limited resource in high demand. Like

undertakers or midwives, I will never be out of a job. My time is of
the essence. My employers measure my effectiveness in terms of the
number of people I advise whereas families measure me by the
quality of the advice I give and my availability. I’m doomed to
disappoint someone.
The first thing to go when I unpacked my training and began
work in the real world was my capacity to spend time. I had to
ration myself. All too often my job doesn’t allow me to do what I
once thought the job would be. I thought I’d have more autonomy
to use my skills. (It feels wholly ironic to call ourselves a service at
times, because we’re increasingly expected to serve the interests of
our own organisation.)
What you often want is my presence – in person or via a phone.
You understandably want to feel supported, perhaps even not wholly
alone. But I can’t fix everything. I know it frustrates you when I fall
into professional-speak, or say ‘I know how you feel’ even though I
probably have no experience equal to your own, but that’s how I’m
trained, even though I suspect such trite phrases actually show a
lack empathy. You’ve noticed I stopped talking of cases or subjects.
That’s an improvement.
There’s an aspect of the professional’s life that rightly dominates:
accountability. I have to record everything in triplicate. There’s a
culture of fear that easily grows along with paperwork: if something
goes wrong and my name is the last recorded point of contact, what
I did and who I am will be questioned. I could be hung out to dry.
Thank goodness we professionals are rarely held to account.
We have no magic solution. This is why often my colleagues and
I prefer to be distant and indifferent, because we’d rather be a little
impersonal than devastated. I can’t fix disability and I can’t mend
broken hearts or marriages. (Though I can make a referral.)
I’m sorry if it feels to you that I expect crumbs from the captain’s
table to suffice. It makes me feel crumby, too. I can seek to mend
the barriers to good person-centred work by challenging how we
organise things, but you know what hierarchies are like. (They make
us all stupid.) I can work to give you what you need rather than
simply manage your expectations. I can be honest and try to not
speak in a strange language at you. Finally, I can learn to pass on to
you freely what my training and experience, my clinical intuition,
have taught me, because you need these ideas each day.
When you ask me what you should be doing, perhaps out of self-
doubt or fear, perhaps out of respect for my reputation, my job role
or my qualification, I have learned to say, ‘I’m sorry, I haven’t a clue.
I don’t know the person. Not yet. But together we might come up
with some ideas.’
About Families: A Letter to Professionals

Dear Professional,

We know you’re busy so will keep this letter short and sweet, a little
like your attention. Thanks for asking how we’re doing. That stopped
us in our tracks. We’re so caught up in doing everyday things well –
it feels we have to be better than any other family, just to pass
muster – that when you asked us, we laughed. We hope you were
not offended. Such questions are rare – time is an endangered
species in your world – and it surprised us to hear someone in your
position ask how we are doing as a couple and as a family.
Have you seen the signs at the train station that warn commuters
to ‘mind the gap’? We’ve joked about putting that sign on our front
door. This family is moving at colossal speed and each appointment
with professionals feels like a sudden stop to let a passenger join us
for a moment. Mind the gap. Off we go.
We’re very grateful for our child; we get tired and irritable: we
become frustrated trying to get people to keep their promises and
make human decisions, and we’re sorry if you seem to get it in the
ear. We’ve been waiting for the things you said we should experience
– trauma and the ‘bereavement of disability’, but eleven years in and
we’re tired and (sometimes) a little beaten but we are not out and
certainly do not regret the gift that is our fierce and beautiful
daughter. I know she’s difficult not to hear but she’s easy to ignore.
What we want – as a family – is us: warts and all, challenging
behaviour and disability. We’d like more time for us to be together,
but who wouldn’t? What we want from you is for you to be able to
stand by us. We want you to be able to listen and pull us up short or
give us advice when we need it. We want neither rocket science
answers nor vagueness, neither critiques nor hints of wrongdoing.
Talk to us normally. Be honest. No side-stepping, no avoidance. We
want practical help when we need it: perhaps another pair of hands,
a holiday, time for the other kids. We want to be able to speak to a
competent someone when we need practical advice, or when we
want to celebrate successes, or share our fears, or say this is a bit
shit right now.
We sense the potential for us to fall into isolation. The very
people whose job it is to make life easier often make it harder
because of the way they work. Sometimes it feels the education
system is designed to frustrate everybody. I’m sure you meet utterly
horrible people. And some of them are in families and some are in
professions.1 This is too important to make much of personal
affronts. Get over yourself and get off our case, get on our side.
The last time we met you had a student with you. We were
asked if there was anything we would like to tell him. Tell him we’ll
welcome him based on his value to us as a family not because of his
qualification. Respect has to be earned with each visit and with
every letter. Respect is not awarded in perpetuity along with his
doctorate. When he finishes his studies tell him that he will be a
centaur: a half human and half professional creature that parents
and people with intellectual disabilities will rely on. Tell him to
remember that ultimately it is we – our daughter and her parents –
who pay his ridiculous salary.
Tell him that numbers are important but it is stories people learn
from. Loving someone whose behaviour challenges is hard but also
joyful: what he does can make or break us. Tell him he will be
privileged to hear our stories. A child with a disability is a child with
a future, and a family with a child with disabilities is always a family:
we will never stop being our daughter’s parents. Love does not
disappear come diagnosis.
Tell him that what he counts may not count with us. What
matters to families may not matter to his bosses when they measure
his impact. This will lead to differences of opinions. He needs to
learn not to take offence: he represents a sometimes heartless
system. He needs to take it on the chin. He needs to ‘mind the gap’.
Tell him to remember that it takes families a lot to ask for help, but it
takes very little for him to screw trust up.
Tell him that despite the promises of inclusive education and
community care, discovering a person-centred professional who
knows their stuff still counts as a remarkable event. Tell him the
small things that matter for children and adults with disabilities are
only small to him; to us they make a significant difference. Tell him
we are the experts: he is just someone who knows stuff. He doesn’t
know us.
Tell him to come to our house at 9pm when things are not going
well. Tell him to visit us at 4.30am when our daughter is up with the
larks and laughing at the pillows tumbling over our heads. Tell him
to sit with her when she is screaming and frightened by a world she
does not understand, and the cruelty she experiences every day
from people who should know better. Tell him life is not just or fair,
and tell him not to add to the injustice. And if he can bring us a cup
of coffee on his way up, he will be most welcome.
Tell him to remember our daughter has a name; she is fully
qualified as a human and she is very much loved. And she loves us
fiercely.

KEY POINTS FROM WORKING TOGETHER OR PULLING APART?

• Challenging behaviour is often difficult for one person to understand.
• Sharing our knowledge with others requires us to trust them.
• Not only must we feel we are taken seriously, we must take others
seriously.
• Solutions are often negotiated from different perspectives.
• A busy professional can often come across as not listening.
• A busy family can often be perceived as challenging, when all they really
want is good support.

1 The proportion of awful parents matches the proportion of awful professionals

(Clements, 2013).
 CHAPTER 4

Behaviour is Lawful
even when Awful
Exotic Communication

Communication plays such a vital role in our lives we often overlook

it: like air, communication is both ubiquitous and invisible. We can
easily become communicatively complacent, taking it for granted.
We can grow an understanding with people with whom we share
a common code or language: we use it to share our ideas and
ourselves. If we do not share a common code there is a gulf
between us and we can easily misinterpret intentions and meanings.
No doubt many of us have met people who talk in unfamiliar
languages. Immediately we find ourselves at a disadvantage. What
do they mean? We might begin to feel isolated or angry. Even if the
code sounds familiar, subtle variations in meaning can cause
confusion. Communication is a set of skills like any other, and like
any other skill, people use communication skills to obscure, lie, bully
and blame, as well as share their thoughts and feelings.
For most day-to-day encounters, we have a rough idea of what
we each mean. Even when our words are jumbled we hope ‘you
know what I mean’. For many people with IDD, or those profoundly
impacted by autism, conventional language does not develop
without support: the number of people who do not have or use
verbal communication is significant. The opportunities for confusion
and mayhem are not to be under-estimated. It follows that many
individuals inhabit the same physical but a different social world,
drowned in words and fast communications, symbolism and subtle
meanings that are only accessible if taught. Formal language is a
code, the sounds a symbol of shared concepts. Sugar doesn’t make
the tongue sweet but those who know sugar understand what is
meant.
Fortunately humans are a wildly talented bunch of primates and
we do not have to rely solely on formal language. Other symbolic
communications exist: a person can learn to sign or use pictures or
symbols. Many of us use symbolic communication codes to share or
obscure our intent or meanings. A good many of us use ‘non-
symbolic’ methods, too, and these ‘radiate’ from us to others: body
language, gestures and facial expressions. In other words,
behaviour.
Children communicate before they speak and adults
communicate without speaking, too. So any behaviour might start as
unintentional – it is not intended to communicate anything at all –
but over time, based on the responses gained, we can shape up
these behaviours to mean something. By being together, we can
grow meaning – subtle, nuanced or obvious – from almost any
behaviour. This is why good friends can hold a private ‘conversation’
in the midst of wider gatherings with a look or gesture or code.
Communication, then, is an exchange, a transmission of self.
A communication exchange requires at least two entities: the ebb
and flow of interactions between people grow meanings through trial
and error. When my children were babies they did not intend for me
to pick them up and comfort them when they first cried – they just
cried in response to physical discomfort such as hunger or being cold
– but I interpreted their behaviour to mean they needed my
attention and, more importantly, action. I made sure they were fed,
cleaned and warmed. Why? Not simply because I am wonderful, but
because doing so brought about a rapid end to their crying. They
soon learned that crying results in a response. Twenty years later, I
am somehow speaking to them about boyfriends, climate change,
the ridiculous cost of higher education and the meaning of life
according to Buddha. Early human exchanges and learning escalate
really quickly like a compound interest of skills.
Those early foundational principles – you matter to me so I
respond – are the bedrock of later skills as well as trust and rapport.
If I had not responded to my children’s unintentional behaviours –
crying – I dread to think what would have happened to them or
myself. The important principle to take from this is that learning to
influence our surroundings often happens informally: before formal
codes of communication develop we need informal non-intentional
behaviours to occur.
If we are not paying attention we cannot respond, and early non-
intentional behaviours will not be shaped. If individuals or infants do
not receive a response their communication behaviour is
extinguished – it stops. Nurturing the ebb and flow of interactions is
vital. We do this by including our children in the realm of things that
matter. Communication is very much an act of compassion.
If accidental or reflexive behaviour (an eye gaze, a cough, a cry
of pain, a sneeze or blink) is viewed as potentially able to create a
communication code (a blink means this, a cough that, a cry
something else), we respond accordingly by investing time and
interest. Meanings can then blossom. A positive reinforcement cycle
can develop: behaviour is shown, we respond, the child responds to
our responses, we respond to their response to our response…and
soon we are growing together, weaving a tapestry of behaviours that
become communication. Behaviour, speech and language are a
choreography crafted from simple beginnings that grow in
complexity and nuanced meaning. A baby goes goo, a toddler utters
doggy, a child says spaniel because the people around them,
through their responding, shape up verbal behaviour. We imbibe the
ideas of others from the cot to the grave.
As children become better communicators tantrums tend to
decrease. We each can have our moments when our communication
is not heard or is misread but on the whole we give up crying for
attention once we have learned more effective ways of securing
attention. This is because our repertoire of skills grows as we
develop. But some children with IDD and some autistic children do
not develop these skills so easily. Where communication abilities
have not been developed in children we often see higher rates of
challenging behaviours. It appears then that those with poor
communication skills, or who are in environments not sensitive to
the need to shape up behaviours to act as communication, are more
likely to show behaviour considered challenging.

The Communication Hypothesis

The communication hypothesis (Carr et al., 1994) suggests
challenging behaviour ‘often functions as a primitive form of
communication for those individuals who do not yet possess or use
more sophisticated forms of communication that would enable them
to influence others to obtain a variety of desirable outcomes’ (p.22).
It is important to remember that no one is suggesting a person who
does not speak will be doomed to display behaviour that challenges;
only that there are likely to be more opportunities for communication
to not develop or be missed. It will simply take more work for early
skills to blossom into complex communicative behaviours. It is
important to remember that people who do communicate well are
also quite able to show behaviours that may be considered
challenging. Finally, no one suggests people whose behaviour is
termed challenging intentionally use their behaviour to influence
others. There is little evidence that challenging behaviour is intended
to make your life difficult.
The communication hypothesis is a metaphor to use when we
seek to understand challenging behaviour: do not think of
challenging behaviour as a pathological issue we need to eliminate;
think of it as being like a potential communication. The
communication hypothesis asks us to wonder: what might this
mean?
The communication hypothesis means we can start thinking of
legitimate ways to hear the person’s message better. We can work to
support the individual to learn that communicating in a way more
people recognise – a sign, a word, a symbol – is more effective than
challenging behaviour.
 We teach by responding consistently to people in certain ways.
This is a constructive exchange and growing of meaning.
The communication hypothesis suggests we can benefit from
thinking of self-injury, aggression and other challenging behaviours
as saying something to us. If someone is hurting themselves
whenever they are asked to do an activity, it would be better for
them to learn to say, sign or show another way of communicating, ‘I
don’t want to do this activity.’ If we teach communication skills to the
person and those around them we often reduce challenging
behaviour whilst increasing the autonomy of the person with IDD.
The key processes are:
• Identify the message (or function) of the challenging
behaviour. (Does the individual regularly gain attention, a
preferred item, or sensory feedback, or do they escape or
avoid people or things, following the behaviour?)
• Identify a communication method that is quicker and takes
less effort than the challenging behaviour, and that
guarantees the same outcome is achieved.
• Ensure those around the individual can deliver the outcome
quickly and consistently.
• The ‘new’ communication mode competes with the
challenging behaviour: being quicker and taking less effort it
is likely to be used more than the challenging behaviour.

You can see this approach works best for behaviours with functions
that are clearly shown to be what is called socially mediated – they
involve others. Attention is socially mediated (someone has to give
attention), as is escape from people (the person goes away), escape
from a task (the task is removed), and getting a preferred, tangible
item (often someone provides the item or facilitates its delivery).
Challenging behaviour sends us a message and finding less harmful
ways to send the same message underpins many support
programmes.
 To illustrate the importance of assuming behaviour has meaning,
let us meet Nancy.
Nancy is a young woman profoundly impacted by IDD and health
issues. She has a supportive family who have organised services in
such a way that she lives in her own home where she has regular
staff as well as family members taking oversight. Nancy doesn’t
speak but can vocalise and has only three consistent signs she uses:
‘please’, ‘more’ and ‘no’. In the last six months Nancy has been seen
to hurt herself more often – specifically, she hits the side of her head
against the kitchen worktop. This is intense and frightening; Nancy
has attended hospital ten times in the last half year.
The communication hypothesis says we might better support
Nancy if we assume this self-harming behaviour is telling us
something. People began to gather information to look for clues
about the ‘message’. They found:
• Nancy is likely to hit her head when asked to complete a
cooking task she is not familiar with.
• The new microwave seemed to be not as clear as the broken
model it replaced and this featured in many incidents of self-
harm.
• It tended to be newer staff still undergoing their induction
who were supporting Nancy when she hurt herself.
• It became clear Nancy was agitated for an hour or so before
these events – her face was a little scrunched up, her
vocalisations louder than normal, and she was seen to be
pulling the earlobe of her right ear.

The communication hypothesis suggested that Nancy’s behaviour

might mean: ‘I am in pain. I don’t understand the new microwave.
And I’m not keen on how the new person is supporting me.’
In response a doctor’s appointment found Nancy had a significant
ear infection. This was treated and within a few days people
reported a reduction in agitation. People noticed Nancy was able to
concentrate on learning about the new microwave. Time was spent
teaching: demonstrating, then guiding, and finally sign-prompting
Nancy to use the controls.
Nancy’s self-harm reduced to once every fortnight, but this
coincided with one particular newer staff member supporting her.
The staff and family took a closer look at how Nancy was supported
during these times. They discovered the newer staff member had
not been inducted into the nuances of responding to Nancy’s early
warning signs that she was unhappy: this meant the new staff
member did not respond when Nancy asked for a break from the
new cooking task she was being shown. Staff felt Nancy’s self-harm
was saying, ‘I don’t understand what this new person is asking.’
The staff group reworked its own practices concerning inductions
to avoid these issues. The new staff member was coached through
role-play and conversation about how best to support Nancy, and
how to read the ‘early warning signs’ things were not going so well
for her. But because Nancy had learned not to trust this new staff
member as much as others, the family and staff decided to hide (or
embed) the new learning he was teaching Nancy in a more fun
activity. In effect doing so ‘reset’ their relationship by focusing on
rapport building.
Beyond the intervention focusing on staff support, the family and
staff team thought a more thorough examination of communication
would be helpful to guide how they support Nancy. With the support
of a speech therapist they were able to understand:
• Most communication to Nancy was verbal yet it was shown
Nancy could confidently respond to two or three key words
in each sentence. Too much verbal communication predicted
misunderstanding. The newer staff tended to use more
words.
• Nancy seemed to get more information from the context
than verbal communication. Nancy knew what to do when
being asked to warm drinks or heat meals in the old
microwave despite staff talking. When the new microwave
was bought Nancy could not immediately see how to open
Other documents randomly have
different content
présent, lequel partageait ma façon de voir, comme il vous le
certifiera lui-même.
Le collègue de Sandri inclina le menton en signe d’adhésion pour
le relever en le faisant suivre de son verre.
—Le diable était donc enfermé dans cette cellule: et par la
fenêtre (nous avions bien regardé) il n’était pas possible d’atteindre
avec la main les branches du lierre. Cela du moins nous avait semblé
ainsi... Celles qui arrivaient près de la fenêtre n’étaient pas plus
grosses que des tuyaux de plumes de pigeons... Son carnier, nous
avions pensé à le visiter... mais trop tard sans doute.
—Il avait contenu un lapin rôti, dit l’autre gendarme, maudit lapin
qui fleurait bon et qui nous a fait oublier tout le reste!
—L’homme, reprit Sandri, ne faisait aucun bruit... Nous aurions
pu aller le voir plus souvent, c’est vrai, nous aurions pu appeler de
temps en temps,—mais toute l’affaire n’a pas duré plus d’un quart
d’heure!
Tonia écoutait de toutes ses oreilles.
—Nous aurions pu faire, dit mélancoliquement l’autre gendarme,
tout ce que nous n’avons pas fait... Quel lapin!
Orsini crut que le gendarme parlait de Maurin:
—Il faut qu’il vous ait ensorcelé pour que vous fassiez encore son
éloge!
—Je l’avoue. Il était cuit et doré à point, avec un bon goût de
farigoule à se pourlécher les doigts.
—Ah! bon! ce n’est donc pas ce Maurin que vous flattez de cette
manière?
—C’est ce lapin dont nous avons déjeuné... quoique ce soit lui,
après tout, la cause de tout le mal. Sans lui, Maurin vous rendrait
visite à cette heure en même temps que nous. Car réfléchissez,
Sandri, que ce lapin, c’est Maurin qui nous l’avait donné, le vin aussi
et tout le reste; et ce fut, je pense, pour nous endormir dans les
plaisirs du manger et du boire. Comment se méfier d’un homme qui
si bien vous nourrit quand vous crevez de faim?
—C’est justement de quoi il fallait se méfier! dit Orsini.
Tonia écoutait toujours avec la plus grande attention, et elle
souriait en silence.
—Nous l’avons reconnu trop tard, confessa Sandri piteusement.
«Et lorsqu’à la fin l’idée nous prit de l’appeler pour voir s’il y était
encore,—car, bien que l’évasion nous parût chose impossible, nous
appelâmes le prisonnier (mais trop tard) pour être en règle avec la
prudence,—rien ne répondit. Je voulus me lever pour aller voir:
«Non, dit mon camarade, il s’amuse à ne pas nous répondre ou bien
il s’est endormi... Nous voyons d’ici la porte qui n’est pas à trente
pas et comment veux-tu que par la fenêtre il s’envole? Il faudrait
être pour ça l’âne de Gonfaron lui-même!» Cette plaisanterie nous fit
rire, nous rappelant le tour, drôle tout de même, que joua Maurin
aux Gonfaronnais... Cependant quelques minutes après: «Je vais
voir, dis-je; si le bougre s’était tué? on ne sait pas!» Nous
débarricadons la porte. Rien qu’une bouteille vide et une pierre pas
très grosse entortillée plusieurs fois d’une grosse ficelle et attachée
au bout d’un bâton qui était droit contre le mur. Nous regardons par
la fenêtre: quatre mètres de corde reliaient ce contre-poids aux
branches d’un chêne qui est là-dessous... L’oiseau s’était envolé! Car
pour glisser sur ce fil il faut des pattes de picatéoù et des ailes, non
pas des pieds et des mains. Alors, nous nous regardâmes, mon
collègue et moi, je dois le dire, d’un air plutôt bête que fier et
content, et nous regrettâmes ensemble d’avoir accepté son lapin qui,
en effet, est cause que si sottement nous avons mal exécuté notre
surveillance.»
A ces mots, n’y tenant plus, Tonia qui jusque-là avait pu cacher
sa joie, Tonia, ravie et énervée, se mit à rire comme une folle, à rire,
à rire autant qu’elle avait pleuré, à rire sans pouvoir s’arrêter.
Sandri se leva, lui jeta un regard féroce et prononça:
—Je comprends maintenant pourquoi tu avais les yeux rouges,
Tonia, quand je suis entré. Ta gaieté de maintenant m’explique trop
bien ta tristesse de tout à l’heure...
Et masquant son dépit de gendarme sous sa jalousie et sa colère
d’amoureux, il cria violemment:
—Il faudra que cela change, Tonia! je te préviens que si je
m’aperçois de la moindre chose dans l’avenir, je cesserai de te voir et
de t’aimer. Un mari, tu en chercheras un autre.
—Je ris, dit-elle redevenant sérieuse, je ris, comme c’est mon
droit, de ce qui est risible...
—En effet, dit l’autre gendarme; cette jolie fille, Sandri, a
vraiment le droit de rire de notre bêtise.
—Toi, tais-toi! cria Sandri.
Avec beaucoup de dignité, trouvant que sa fille en ce moment
n’avait pas tous les torts, Orsini prit la parole:
—Tu feras comme tu jugeras bon, Sandri, mais j’aime mieux, au
bout du compte, voir rire ma fille que la voir pleurer. C’est une
honnête fille, ne l’oublie pas. Quant à la menacer de rompre nos
engagements, tu es libre. Il faudrait n’être guère fier pour ne pas te
le dire en ce moment et ne pas te le répéter, après ce que tu viens
de dire toi-même! Du reste, si tu fais souvent des beaux coups
comme celui d’aujourd’hui, tes galons de brigadier ne te tomberont
pas du ciel... ce serait miracle... Et dans ce cas, comme tu le sais
bien, pas n’est besoin de chercher sujet à rupture puisque le marché
de lui-même sera rompu de notre côté!
Alessandri suffoquait.
 —Au revoir! fit-il. On recausera un autre jour. Pour aujourd’hui,
c’est assez! Le chasseur est excusable d’avoir de l’humeur quand il
voit le lièvre qu’il croyait tué, sortir de sa gibecière pour gambader
dans la plaine. Il ne vous est pas facile d’être bien aimable quand de
votre mésaventure, qui devrait vous faire plaindre, votre future rit à
votre nez comme d’un bonheur qui lui arrive!... Au revoir; on verra la
suite!
Il sortit, suivi de son acolyte, tandis qu’Orsini haussait les épaules
et rallumait sa vieille pipe.
—Mon père, dit Tonia, je vous remercie, vous êtes bon de m’avoir
défendue.
—Je n’ai que toi, Tonia, dit simplement Orsini... Et il ajouta avec
un dédain dont il ne sentait pas le comique:
—Après tout, est-ce que je le connais, moi, ce gendarme? Ils
nous ennuient, à la fin, ces beaux soldats qui font les vantards et qui
nous prennent tout d’un coup nos filles, quand nous les avons faites
grandes et belles!
La jolie et rusée fillette alla à son père, et, câlinement,
l’embrassa.
 C H A P I T R E X LV I

Comment et pourquoi, non sans regret, Maurin fit à un

gendarme un cadeau princier, ce qui l’amena à conter à ses amis
La lièvre de juin.

A quelques jours de là, M. Cabissol apprit que Maurin serait

traqué à la fois par toutes les brigades des Maures.
Il le fit prévenir par l’ami Pastouré, et lui fit savoir en même
temps que M. Rinal le cacherait chez lui, aussi longtemps que cela
paraîtrait nécessaire.
Maurin arriva de nuit chez M. Rinal, à l’insu même de Cigalous à
qui on se fit un devoir de ne rien dire.
Cigalous était le maire. On aurait pu le compromettre en lui
confiant le secret.
Maurin, bien navré de ne plus courir les bois durant le jour,
sortait chaque nuit, allait se mettre à l’affût du sanglier et de la
lièvre, sorte de braconnage qui, en temps ordinaire, lui plaisait peu;
mais il faut bien vivre, et nécessité n’a pas de loi.
Il passa ainsi chez M. Rinal environ deux semaines.
Sous prétexte de chasse, M. Cabissol, pour la circonstance, s’était
fixé à Bormes; Pastouré y fit de fréquentes apparitions et tous deux,
Pastouré et Cabissol, l’un presque muet, l’autre agréablement
bavard, passèrent avec Maurin, chez M. Rinal, plus d’une soirée
joyeuse.
Un soir, Maurin qui était resté, à son ordinaire, tout l’après-midi
dans le grenier chez M. Rinal, déclara qu’il ne sortirait pas cette nuit-
là.
 Pastouré, qui était venu le chercher, s’étonna. M. Cabissol et M.
Rinal parurent également fort surpris.
—Et pourquoi ne sortiras-tu pas ce soir?
—A cause, dit Maurin, d’une rencontre que j’ai eue et d’un
cadeau que j’ai fait aux gendarmes de Bormes, la nuit dernière.
—Oh! Oh! Contez-nous ça, Maurin.
M. Rinal, confortablement assis dans un vieux fauteuil au coin du
feu, fumait une cigarette; de sa main fine, élégante parmi la
manchette brodée et souple, il en offrit une à M. Cabissol, qui, le dos
aux coussins, s’était installé sur le divan recouvert d’un tapis
oriental.
Maurin et Pastouré, malgré les invitations réitérées du maître de
la maison, n’acceptaient pas les sièges moelleux; ils s’y trouvaient
mal à l’aise, et préféraient les durs escabeaux de bois de chêne,
sans dossier.
—Contez-nous ça, Maurin. Et d’abord, allumez vos pipes.
Les pipes allumées:
—Voici, dit Maurin. Je revenais cette nuit de l’affût, et je
rapportais ici ma lièvre, une lièvre de quatre kilos, mon ami! une
chose comme un loup! qui me remplissait ton carnier, ô Pastouré, et
même davantage—car c’est ton carnier, Pastouré, que j’avais
emporté, avec ta permission, vu que le mien est grand comme une
malle et que je ne croyais pas en avoir besoin, ne comptant pas tuer
plus d’une lièvre, comme de juste.
«Je revenais donc avec mon carnier, c’est-à-dire le tien, jeté sur
mon épaule, et cette lièvre dedans qui devait bien aller dix livres,
mon ami! une chose comme un petit veau! et j’avais pris à travers
bois pour ne pas suivre le chemin afin de ne pas faire de mauvaise
rencontre.
 «Mais, figurez-vous, monsieur Rinal, qu’en un certain moment,
pas très loin de Bormes, il m’a fallu quitter le bois et traverser la
route. La route traversée, je comptais rentrer dans le bois de l’autre
côté, pour attraper les sentiers que je connais et me rendre ici en
passant par-dessus la colline.
«Eh bé! voyez un peu ma chance, monsieur Cabissol: au moment
où, dans la solitude du gros bois, je me serais fait l’effet d’être à
cent mille lieues de toutes les gendarmeries—si j’y avais pensé, aux
gendarmes!—voilà qu’une chose extraordinaire me surprend. Il faut
dire qu’il n’y avait dans le ciel qu’un petit rien du tout de quart de
lune mince comme une faucille qu’on a usée à force de la passer à la
meule.
«Je voyais mon chemin, comme un aveugle, avec les yeux de
l’habitude. Je descendais la colline; et j’arrive enfin devant la route
en contre-bas que je voulais traverser; j’étais sur le talus, au-dessus
du fossé, je saute sur la route, d’un mètre de haut, et voilà-t-il pas
que je tombe juste devant un gendarme arrêté dans l’ombre d’un
chêne-liège, et qui, je pense, m’écoutait venir!... Il était à l’affût, lui
aussi.
«Noum dé pas Díou qué mi díou! Paouré tu, Móourin, siès
perdu!»—Il ne devait pas m’attendre sitôt, car, lui aussi, il était là,
saisi, gelé, pétrifié, quoi! mais, tout en un coup, il avance les deux
mains pour me prendre.
«Une idée alors me vient du ciel! J’ôte vivement mon carnier de
l’épaule et, sans souffler un mot, je te le lui flanque dans les bras, le
carnier avec la lièvre, une chose énorme, comme tu n’en as jamais
vu, mon homme, une chose comme un bœuf!
«Et frrutt! je disparais dans la bruyère comme un petit lapin,
avant qu’il ait pu se reconnaître, ni me reconnaître. C’est drôle, qué?
Je ne sais pas comment il aura pu se tirer d’affaire avec un paquet
pareil entre les bras! Il est peut-être encore là-bas sur place!
Imaginez donc! une lièvre comme on n’en a jamais vu, mon ami,
une chose lourde et grosse comme un chameau!... C’est beaucoup
regrettable. Et cependant, pour me n’en sauver, pechère, je la lui ai
offerte de bon cœur!
Pastouré retira sa pipe de sa bouche avec la main gauche et
tendit son poing droit, le pouce levé, bien roide.
—Ce que je regrette le plus, dit Maurin, c’est le carnier de
Pastouré, mais ce qui me console, c’est que son nom n’est pas
dedans.
Pastouré fit un geste d’insouciance.
—C’est égal, dit Maurin, elle est forte celle-là! On a bien raison de
dire que, même quand il est dans le carnier, le gibier n’est pas
encore au chasseur. On ne le tient bien qu’au bout de la fourchette.
Les auditeurs de Maurin s’attardèrent un moment à commenter
l’aventure, s’égayant à l’idée de l’étonnement du gendarme.
Ce soir-là, les histoires de chasse défrayèrent seules la
conversation, et M. Cabissol ayant émis cette opinion que, par
avarice, tout paysan qui a pris un lièvre en fraude se ferait tuer
plutôt que de l’abandonner aux gendarmes, comme l’avait fait
Maurin, celui-ci s’indigna:
—Vous connaissez bien des choses, monsieur Cabissol, et j’ai
bien du respect pour vous, mais si vous pensez cela, alors, c’est que
vous ne connaissez pas mon peuple. Tenez, le printemps dernier,
voici ce qui est arrivé à Pitalugue.
Et Maurin poursuivit ainsi:

LA LIÈVRE DE JUIN
Pitalugue labourait son champ, dans la plaine au-dessous de
Bormes.
 Tout en un coup, tirant sur les brides de corde, il arrêta
doucement et en silence son cheval et, les yeux écarquillés et fixes,
il regarda attentivement un creux de sillon dans son labour de la
veille, à vingt pas devant lui, à sa main droite, sous le vent.
Voyons, il ne se trompait pas: cette espèce de paquet gris et
rougeâtre qui ne remuait pas, c’était une lièvre. Elle dormait. Nom
dé pas Diou, qué lèbre!... Une chose grosse comme un gros chien,
mon ami!
Que faire pour l’avoir?
Se taire d’abord et réfléchir, mais réfléchir un peu vite et prendre
un parti au plus tôt.
Adonc, Pitalugue réfléchissait, immobile, les deux mains serrant,
d’émotion, les manchons de l’araire, derrière son vieux cheval.
Qu’heureusement il y avait du vent, et pas de mouches!—
pourquoi, s’il y en avait eu, des mouches, le cheval, en les chassant
du pied, aurait peut-être fait du bruit à réveiller la lièvre.
Elle dormait comme un plomb, pechère!
Alors, Pitalugue se pensa: «Si je voyais là-bas quelqu’un de mes
enfants, je lui ferais signe de m’apporter le fusil, mais je n’en vois
pas. Quand on laboure, on devrait toujours être armé!...»
Pitalugue avait laissé son araire en plan, il avançait à pas
silencieux vers la bête endormie.
Voici ce qu’il comptait faire:
Arrivé près de la lièvre, quand il l’aurait presque à ses pieds, il se
baisserait tout doucement, puis, d’un coup, laisserait tomber tout
son corps de tout son poids sur elle, comme tombe la lourde pierre
d’un quatre de chiffre... il l’écraserait ainsi sous sa lourde poitrine,
car sans cela, de la prendre tout bonnement avec la main comme on
cueille la figue à la figuière, il n’y fallait pas songer. C’est fort, une
lièvre.
Donc, c’était décidé, il allait faire, de tout son corps, une pierre
de lesque. Et malgré cela, en se détendant et se débattant, elle
saurait peut-être se faire lâcher!
Il approcha, approcha. La lièvre ne s’éveilla point. Quelle lièvre,
mon ami! un petit âne d’Alger!... Pitalugue jeta encore un regard
vers sa bastide: personne.
Alors, résolument, il se laissa tomber comme un bloc de carrière
sur la lièvre qui dormait toujours. Elle ne s’éveilla que sous le choc
avec un cri, mon homme! que tu aurais dit de trois cents rats qui ont
tous à la fois la queue prise dans une jointure de porte.
Quand il sentit la bête chaude et remuante contre son estomac:
«Vé! que je l’ai!» cria-t-il, joyeux.
Et il travailla à lui prendre les pattes, deux dans chaque main!...
«—Ah! par exemple! c’est «un bon affaire»! Je n’ai pas manqué
mon coup!... Voyez un peu, sans fusil, ce que peut faire le génie de
l’homme!»
Quand il se releva, il aperçut ses quatre enfants et sa femme qui
venaient à lui.
L’aîné de ses trois «drôles» portait le fusil; sa petite dernière
courait devant la mère. Tous avaient vu de loin les manières de
Pitalugue, et ils avaient compris, les monstres! Car un paysan aux
champs voit tout ce qui se passe aussi loin que peut porter sa vue
et, à la manière des mouvements d’un homme, il devine, au loin, si
l’homme se gratte pour une puce ou pour une mouche.
Pitalugue cria à son aîné qui n’était plus beaucoup loin:
—Pitalugue, j’ai de la ficelle à la poche, va vite la prendre dans
ma veste qui est pendue à l’olivier le plus proche.
 Mais de la cordelette, Pitalugue fils en avait sur lui, et la lièvre fut
liée par les quatre pattes, au milieu du rond que faisaient autour
d’elle la femme, les quatre enfants et le père.
—Père, ne lui «fasse pas de mal!» disait la petite en se haussant,
pour voir ce grand lapin sauvage qui gigotait de son mieux, pechère,
mais sans pouvoir se tirer de ce mauvais pas.
La lièvre liée, chacun voulut lui tâter le râble.
Seule, la petite ne caressait que le poil.
—Quelle lièvre! Ça pèse bien huit livres!
—Ah! çà, vaï, huit livres! Elle en pèse au moins dix!
—S’il te fallait l’acheter, tu la paierais bien dans les sept, huit
francs!
—Ah! çà, vaï, sept, huit francs, dans cette saison! pour quinze tu
ne l’aurais pas!
—C’est à Paris qu’ils seraient contents d’avoir la pareille, au mois
de juin!...
—De lièvre, moi, dit l’aîné, je n’en ai pas mangé deux fois dans
ma vie.
—C’est bon? dit le second.
—Meilleur que du poulet, bien sûr!
—Quand est-ce qu’on la mangera? demanda le plus petit des
trois garçons.
A ce moment, misé Pitalugue s’écria:
—Bou Dioù! Elle a du lait, voyez, pechère! C’est une mère... c’est
facile à comprendre que ses petits l’attendent quelque part...
 Elle pressait les mamelles de la pauvre bête épouvantée et
haletante. Les gouttes de lait venaient au bout des tétines.
—C’est embêtant, dit l’homme.
Et tous, un long moment, gardèrent le silence, bien ennuyés.
—Pourquoi, embêtant? dit l’aîné. Est-ce qu’elle sera mauvaise?
—C’est embêtant qu’elle ait des petits, dit la femme. Ça fait
peine, tout de même, de penser qu’ils vont mourir dans un trou!
La lièvre, bien liée par les pattes, fut déposée à terre. Et tous
s’assirent autour d’elle, tenant conseil.
Il y avait un bon moment, poursuivit Maurin, que, passant par là,
je m’étais approché d’eux.
«Ils m’expliquèrent toute l’affaire.»
—J’étais avec Maurin, confirma alors Pastouré, qui suivait
attentivement tous les détails du récit en remuant les lèvres comme
s’il eût répété mot à mot tout ce que disait Maurin, lequel continua
ainsi:
—Que faut-il faire? demanda Pitalugue. C’est bon, la lièvre. Et
puis, il y a de quoi faire un gros repas à nous six. Ça compte, ça,
dans une maison pauvre comme est la nôtre!... Qu’allons-nous faire,
Maurin?
Je lui dis:
—Je ne sais pas; la lièvre est tienne. C’est des choses qui ne
regardent que ceux qui y ont leur intérêt. Mais si j’étais «de toi», je
la lâcherais.
—Ce sont ses petits qui me tourmentent, dit Pitalugue. J’ai tous
ces petits levrautons dans ma tête.
—Ils vont pleurer à fendre le cœur, dit sa femme.
 —Et crever sans être utiles à personne, dit Pitalugue.
Alors, la petite dernière se mit à sangloter:
—Je veux pas qu’on la tue, père! Père, il ne faut pas la tuer.
—Allons, dit la femme, ne contrarie pas la petite... c’est quinze
francs de jetés par la fenêtre... lâche-la tout de même.
Avec beaucoup de précautions pour ne pas lui casser les pattes,
ils la délièrent.
Et quand elle fut déliée, Pitalugue et sa femme et tous en eurent
comme un remords. Ils ne voulaient plus la lâcher:
—C’est dommage! un si beau morceau, et si bon! une lièvre de
vingt francs, pour le moins!... Remets-lui vite la ficelle aux pattes,
Pitalugue.
Mais la petite fille cria:
—Laisse-la aller à sa maison, père!... ses petits appellent et puis,
d’abord, moi, je la veux voir courir!...
—Ses petits ne sont pas loin, probable! dit le père... elle en doit
bien avoir trois ou quatre... Il faudra veiller. Nous les tuerons quand
ils seront grands. Ne prenons pas les bêtes par traîtrise, quand elles
ont des petits...
Que vous dirai-je, messieurs, la compassion l’emporta:
—Regardez bien! y êtes-vous? Pas de regrets?... une, deux!...
adessias!
Posée à terre, la bête bondit...
Ici, entraîné par la force de ses souvenirs, Pastouré, interrompant
Maurin, s’écria:
—Ah! messieurs!... si vous l’aviez vu filer, cette mère!
 —Et voilà le cœur de mon peuple! conclut Maurin.

—Bravo! dit M. Rinal ému. Là-dessus, je vais me coucher... Et je

vous engage, Maurin, à ne pas sortir du tout avant quelque temps,
pas plus la nuit que le jour. Demain nous reprendrons cette
conversation.
—D’autant plus volontiers, dit M. Cabissol, que j’ai appris sur le
compte d’un gros personnage, mari d’une femme dont l’influence, à
Paris, nous est tout acquise en faveur de Maurin, une histoire des
plus divertissantes, et je brûle de vous la conter.
—Parbleu, dit M. Rinal, vous me donnez envie d’être à demain!...
Et les quatre amis se séparèrent.
 C H A P I T R E X LV I I

Qu’il ne faut pas lire, parce qu’on y relate la profonde et

ennuyeuse conversation qu’eurent ensemble,—en présence de
Maurin des Maures et de Parlo-Soulet,—M. Rinal et M. Cabissol,
lequel se décida, pour en finir, à conter deux galégeades.

Le lendemain du jour où il avait conté à ses amis la Lièvre de

juin, Maurin ne fut pas oisif.
Désireux de se rendre utile à son hôte, pour lui témoigner sa
reconnaissance, il passait, en effet, ses après-midi devant un banc
de menuisier, réparant une porte ou un volet, un pied de table ou de
chaise, car il faisait de ses mains, comme on dit, tout ce qu’il voulait,
notre homme, et, dans une île déserte, pourvu que le naufrage lui
eût laissé quelques outils à peu près, il eût été capable de construire
une péniche presque aussi bien que le charpentier du bord.
Le soir, après le dîner auquel assista M. Cabissol et où, bien
entendu, fut servi un poulet sans tête, la conversation prit un tour
singulièrement philosophique.
Lorsqu’arriva Pastouré qui, silencieux à son habitude, s’assit sur
son escabeau tout en allumant sa pipe, la discussion entre l’avocat
et l’ancien chirurgien de marine battait son plein.
Les deux chasseurs écoutaient, s’efforçant de comprendre, et
comprenant en effet bien des choses, mais non pas tout, et pour
cause.
Les deux interlocuteurs parlaient de Nietzsche.
A quel propos?
 A propos du sentiment de pitié auquel le lièvre de Pitalugue avait
dû sa libération.
Le philosophe allemand, dissertant de la pitié, dit en propres
termes: «Les petites gens la tiennent aujourd’hui pour la vertu par
excellence... Gardons-nous de la pitié. Soyons durs.»
—Il a bien raison, s’écriait M. Rinal. Robespierre et Marat
pitoyables, c’est la révolution française, l’émancipation du monde
rendues impossibles.
—Cependant, répliquait M. Cabissol qui partageait, au fond,
l’opinion de M. Rinal, mais qui s’amusait à le contredire à seule fin
de l’exciter aux répliques,—cependant vous ne pouvez pas voir dans
votre assiette une tête de poulet?
—Les poulets sont des innocents. Toutes les bêtes sont
innocentes.
—Maurin est un chasseur; il tue des bêtes.
—Il les tue pour en vivre. La vie inférieure doit être sacrifiée à la
vie supérieure, et celle-ci a le droit d’être impitoyable lorsqu’il s’agit
pour elle d’assurer sa conservation et les moyens de s’élever encore.
Les miséricordieux sont les protecteurs de la vie; mais ils doivent la
protéger, par pitié suprême, contre les premiers mouvements de leur
pitié instinctive, laquelle pourrait donner la victoire aux vrais
impitoyables... N’en doutez pas, c’est le fond de la pensée de
Nietzsche.
Il faut croire que Maurin avait compris car il grommela:
—Il vaut mieux tuer le diable...
—Que si le diable vous tue, proféra Pastouré le taciturne.
—Le difficile, continua M. Rinal, c’est de distinguer entre les
véritables durs capables de sacrifier l’humanité entière à leurs
convenances personnelles, et les autres, ceux qui ne sont
inexorables qu’en vue du bien général.
—Théorie dangereuse.
—Théorie féconde. Et tenez, dans la vie courante, à toute heure,
il faut savoir broyer en soi, douloureusement, toute compassion
envers ceux qu’on aime, afin d’assurer leur progrès moral et par
conséquent de les aider à être heureux un jour. C’est l’idée
éducatrice par excellence. Jésus n’eut-il pas ses heures de colère?
Nietzsche n’a rien inventé!—Au demeurant, poursuivit M. Rinal, les
philosophes ne me plaisent guère parce qu’ils ont la prétention,
chacun, de trouver la définitive formule de la vérité. La vérité est
éparse et il n’est encore au pouvoir de nulle créature humaine d’en
raccorder les fragments disséminés. Le secret, la clef de cet accord
ont été cachés dès l’origine sous une pierre des fées ou dans un
antre de pythonisse. Il y a plus de vérité dans l’intuition
intermittente des simples en général et des poètes en particulier, que
dans les systèmes prétentieux d’un philosophe. Les philosophes ne
sont que des poètes manqués et, ce qui est plus grave, de simples
gens de lettres, du moins pour la plupart.
—Qu’entendez-vous par là?
—J’entends par là des artistes qui se préoccupent surtout de leur
gloire. Le désir de se signaler gâte leur sincérité. L’univers nous
apparaît comme contradictoire à lui-même; notre esprit est encore
incapable de concevoir que le conflit des forces opposées, la lutte
des antinomies, vie et mort, bien et mal, est la condition même de
l’ordre dans le monde. Or, malgré eux, les philosophes, dont la
logique est mise en déroute par l’inexplicable, finissent par se
préoccuper avant tout de paraître originaux. Il faut fonder un
système qui ne ressemble pas au système des aînés, sans quoi on
n’est que leur écolier, et il s’agit de se poser en maître. Nietzsche est
un douloureux attendri qui porte sa robe à l’envers. De quoi est-il
vêtu? Quelles couleurs singulières! Retournez l’étoffe de Nessus qui
emprisonne sa chair et vous reconnaîtrez la pitié. Il la hait parce qu’il
en meurt. Grand poète, un peu obscur, que la mort de Dieu a rendu
fou, admirateur de l’énergie parce qu’il se sentait faible et de la
dureté parce qu’il était trop tendre.
M. Cabissol toussa.
—La pitié, la pitié, dit-il, c’est, au bout du compte, un acte
instinctif par lequel nous nous supposons à la place de l’homme qui
souffre; nous nous y voyons, par une opération imaginative qui nous
fait souffrir son mal; et c’est nous que, égoïstement, nous
soulageons ou voulons soulager en lui.
—Même ainsi comprise, dit M. Rinal, la pitié est noble. Elle est la
protection de chacun dans tous, de tous par chacun. Elle fait éclater
aux yeux de l’esprit le mystère de l’unité dans l’innombrable.
—Les mots peuvent tout dire. Toutes les thèses se peuvent
soutenir, s’écria M. Cabissol. Où est la vérité, je vous le demande?
—Dans tout, vous dis-je; la vie ne se trompe pas. Le singe flaire
une pomme vénéneuse et la rejette.
«Le besoin d’une morale préexiste, dans l’homme, à toute morale
formulée. Ce besoin est un fait physiologique, comme la faim.
«Et l’homme, pris en masse, en tant qu’être moral, se comporte
vis-à-vis des idées comme le singe avec les fruits: il reconnaît au flair
les doctrines qui empoisonnent, ou s’il y mord, il ne s’en nourrit pas.
M. Cabissol toussa de nouveau.
—S’il y goûte, il peut en mourir, dit-il.
—Individuellement; mais en tant que race, en tant qu’humanité,
l’homme résiste à tous les poisons que produit son cerveau, car la
volonté de vivre est infinie, et indépendante de son raisonnement.
La cause reste la plus forte. L’espérance indéfinie, si voisine de la foi,
est, comme le besoin d’une morale, un fait physiologique.
Pastouré, émerveillé, renouvela un mot célèbre:
 —C’est bougrement beau: je n’y comprends rien.
—Tout de même, poursuivit M. Rinal, l’idéal, le rêve du meilleur
et du plus beau, produit par le cerveau humain, est un fait. On peut
très bien admettre que ce rêve est une étape vers la réalisation
positive des plus nobles chimères.
«Il ne me paraît pas absurde d’affirmer que Dieu, ainsi compris,
et qui n’existe pas encore pour qui n’en a pas la conception, existe
déjà réellement pour celui qui l’aime!...
«Pourquoi, dans l’infini, le progrès ne serait-il pas indéfini? Il
n’est pas nécessaire aujourd’hui d’avoir du génie pour constater que,
dans l’ordre social, tout évolue et que tout monte.
—Vous trouvez? dit M. Cabissol.
—Parbleu! quand on ne s’en aperçoit pas, c’est qu’on oublie le
passé. Mais, à travers toutes les cruautés, les trivialités, les
stupidités de notre vie sociale, il est facile, en comparant les
conditions de l’existence moderne avec ce que nous savons du
passé, de voir que tout est mieux. Un peu de mieux suffit à
l’espérance d’un autre «peu de mieux». De jour en jour, l’homme
s’installe plus confortablement sur le globe et par suite il a le loisir
de jouir mieux que jamais, et de mieux comprendre les beautés de
la nature et celles des arts.
—En vérité! dit M. Cabissol, vous croyez que le peuple se soucie
de l’art?
—Pas encore beaucoup, mais donnez-lui le temps. Éduquez-le.
Voilà Maurin qui nous écoute... et voilà Pastouré. Eh bien, leur
manière de raconter ou d’écouter prouve qu’ils ont le goût de la vie,
de la pensée et de l’expression artiste.
—Je vous avoue que bien souvent je me dis au contraire (et j’en
demande pardon à Maurin) que la masse est aveugle, stupide et
indécrottable. Elle n’aime que les cabarets. Et sans des bourgeois
comme vous, qui la conseillent et la guident, elle ne serait même pas
capable de revendiquer les libertés qu’elle ne comprend point et
qu’elle s’imagine conquérir parce que vous les lui accordez. Qu’est-ce
que le socialisme, sans les bourgeois de gouvernement? Un tas
d’ignares, une tourbe envieuse, imbécile et mauvaise; ça, c’est le
peuple.
—Mais sacrebleu! s’écria M. Rinal, les bourgeois de
gouvernement c’est le peuple, c’est le surpeuple si vous voulez, mais
le peuple d’aujourd’hui sera le surpeuple de demain. Sans doute le
monde, vu superficiellement, est bête, mauvais, vilain, mais n’est-il
pas admirable que de tout ce chaos se dégage en somme une idée
d’humanité supérieure, un simple petit espoir, mais lumineux, une
vision d’homme plus doux, plus fort, plus civilisé? Et ces bourgeois
qu’on accuse—je les accuse—qu’on méprise—je les méprise—n’est-il
pas magnifique, après tout, que ce soit eux qui se fassent les
instruments de l’évolution du prolétariat à laquelle ils perdront
quelque chose de leurs avantages?
—Ils n’y perdent rien, dit timidement M. Cabissol; ils y gagnent
momentanément le pouvoir. Cette compensation leur suffit.
—Un pouvoir qu’ils emploient à préparer leur chute de demain!...
Vous m’agacez à la fin.
«De quel droit suspectez-vous leur bonne foi? Pourquoi pas la
mienne? Qu’ai-je à gagner, moi par exemple, à l’avènement de
Maurin, de Pastouré et de tous les prolétaires de France? Rien. Je
professe une opinion qui les sert et qui peut me desservir, puisque je
ne brigue ni le mandat de député ni celui de conseiller municipal. Et
pourquoi suis-je avec eux? Parce que je les aime, tout bêtement, et
parce que j’aime la justice.
—Oh! vous! vous!... vous êtes un saint laïque, grogna Cabissol.
—Noum dé pas Díou! dit Maurin, vous me faites venir la chair de
poule, monsieur Rinal, à force de bien parler. Ah! si nous en avions
«de comme vous» pour les envoyer là-haut, on te la referait, la
France! Qu’en dis-tu, Pastouré?
 —Je suis là que je me le pense, dit le colosse-enfant.
M. Cabissol semblait réfléchir.
—Alors, reprit-il enfin après un long silence, vous croyez vraiment
qu’il y a un autre progrès que le progrès industriel, matériel? non!
L’homme s’installe de jour en jour plus confortablement sur ce globe,
mais il est resté la méchante bête qu’il fut et sera toujours.
—Mon cher Cabissol, dit M. Rinal, voici à quoi je pensais, pendant
que Maurin nous contait hier sa jolie histoire de La lièvre de juin...
Quelques années avant la Révolution française, une troupe de
jeunes gens, tous apparentés, de près ou de loin, à MM. les
membres du Parlement d’Aix, revenaient, un soir, d’une partie de
campagne. Ils avaient avec eux d’aimables femmes. Ils étaient gais,
excités par les propos libres et les bons vins qu’ils avaient bus dans
la journée. Ayant rencontré, près de la ville, un paysan qui s’en
retournait chez lui monté sur son âne, ils le plaisantèrent à qui
mieux mieux et, de fil en aiguille (le paysan répondant à la
galégeade par la galégeade), ils lui proposèrent de jouer avec eux...
au Parlement. S’il consentait à tenir le rôle de l’accusé dans la
comédie qu’ils allaient improviser, il aurait pour sa récompense un
bel écu d’argent. Le paysan, bonhomme, y consentit. On prit goût au
jeu, on s’échauffa, et ayant jugé le manant pour rire... on le pendit
pour de bon!
«Ce crime ne fut pas puni. Un procès en règle aurait compromis
des noms de juges trop illustres!
«Voilà à quelle conception de l’inégalité des hommes en étaient
arrivés quelques-uns au moins des puissants du jour, ceux que la
Révolution allait abattre. Ces illustres, ces bien-nés pouvaient tout
faire, tout se permettre contre le droit des humbles.
«Tout une caste, ou du moins (et cela suffit) les plus orgueilleux
d’une caste orgueilleuse, se croyaient tellement au-dessus du peuple
qu’ils prenaient avec lui toutes licences. C’était, devenu légion,
Néron, incarnation de toute-puissance et d’orgueil. C’était la tyrannie
d’une seule classe de citoyens sur toutes les autres, et, dans le crime
commis contre tout ce qui n’était pas elle, elle goûtait des joies
sadiques, monstrueuses. Voilà ce que la Révolution vint détruire
d’une façon immédiate, sans pitié, au nom d’une pitié supérieure, à
longue échéance.
«A ce meurtre du paysan d’Aix, pendu par des fils de
parlementaires en humeur de rire (histoire exceptionnelle, je le veux
bien, mais qui ne serait plus possible de nos jours, sinon au fond de
l’Afrique et contre des nègres, et pour les mêmes motifs d’orgueil
maladif), l’évolution morale, le progrès moral de notre civilisation
libertaire répondent aujourd’hui par l’histoire (exceptionnelle aussi,
je le veux bien), de La lièvre de juin, que Maurin nous a contée hier.
«L’homme est devenu meilleur pour l’homme et même pour les
bêtes.
«Et je n’ajouterai qu’un mot: Le génie lui-même ne met pas
l’homme au-dessus des hommes. Le savant ou l’artiste n’est digne
du respect universel que lorsque, bien loin de s’isoler dans des
œuvres d’orgueil, inaccessibles aux masses, il devient au contraire le
cœur multiplié qui se donne aux foules pour les consoler ou les
guérir.
«Allons! allons, conclut M. Rinal, vous nous avez promis une
histoire gaie, Cabissol, contez-nous-la.
Cabissol commença ainsi:

LES CANARDS DU LABRADOR....

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