15: Why Misbehavior Often Starts With Misunderstanding

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If school feels like a daily battlefield at home, there’s a deeper cause most families miss: confusion masquerading as misbehavior. We pull apart how unclear words, shaky reading skills, and assumed “basics” create stress that kids eventually fight—by checking out, acting up, or hiding behind test tricks that raise grades but kill understanding.

We start by mapping the hidden influences beyond home—teachers, peers, curriculum—and show how a simple gap in meaning can snowball into teasing, skipping class, or vandalism. Then we zoom in on the turning point: the moment memorization becomes a false fix. That short-term boost can look like success, but it cements a fragile identity built on recall, not comprehension. Along the way, we tie abstract subjects to real life: geometry as earth-measuring and property lines, algebra as a language of unknowns that shows up in projects, budgets, and repairs. When students see the “why,” motivation stops being forced and starts being chosen.

From there, we offer a clear path forward for parents. First, make it safe to talk. Ask what happened and what else without turning honesty into instant punishment. With the air cleared, stop chasing last week’s grade and back up to fundamentals—especially reading, vocabulary, and the habit of defining terms. Then rebuild competence through small, visible wins: setting the table to a standard, following a recipe, fixing something simple, or looking up a word and teaching it back. Link each academic concept to the child’s interests so learning connects to life. Pride grows from results, not rules, and behavior follows pride.

If this conversation resonates, subscribe, share the episode with a friend who needs it, and leave a review with one question you want us to tackle next. Your feedback helps more families turn confusion into clarity and bring curiosity back to learning.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Framing Behavior And Education
• 1:22 Influences Beyond The Home
• 2:46 From Confusion To Acting Out
• 4:21 Words, Meaning, And Motivation
• 7:07 Memorization As A False Fix
• 9:42 Secrets, Disconnection, And Escalation
• 12:48 Making It Safe To Talk
• 14:00 Backing Up To Master Basics
• 15:47 Building Pride Through Competence
• 22:14 Closing Thoughts And Next Steps

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:32

Hello and welcome to another episode. Today, Mike and I, your hosts, are going to be going over a subject that is actually pretty unknown as to its basic causes, even though sometimes it's thought that it is known or the apparent reasons are given for it. But we're going to be going over behavior in education and how different factors regarding education affect or even dictate behavior. So at the end, of course, Mike will be giving some real life solutions that a parent can use with their child right now, today, after listening to this episode. So be sure to stay tuned for that. So why don't you give us the 101 on behavior and education, Mike?

SPEAKER_01: 1:22

Okay. So the first thing to know is that this child's behavior is not uh strictly and only dictated by uh the parents. There are so many other influences on a child by the time they've been sent to school. There's the teachers, there's the other kids, there's um the educational material that they're studying. All those things come into play. And so the parents can think that they are aware of all these factors, but it often goes way out of control and way out of view of the parents by the time the kids are in third, fourth grade when they're coming home from school and saying, Um, you know, what did you study in school today? I don't know. Okay. They don't they don't know what happened all day long. And so and so there are these other influences out of view of the parents, and it takes a lot of investigatory work to find out what's really going on. But of course that's what we've been doing for uh what combined 50 years between the two of us, I think, is investigating these things and finding out what's really going on here. Little j little Jimmy, what's happening? You know, and uh it by the time it gets into misbehavior, and here we're talking about just all the things that kids begin to do. They start to act a bit mean, they start teasing other kids. Um, and this is where we we touched on in one of our episodes, you know, the the bullying and being bullied. But then it goes it goes into to other things. It goes into um skipping class or uh vandalizing things at school or playing tricks on other kids, uh stealing their lunch. Why would they where do they get this idea? Well there's something going on there that's unseen, and that's the fact that the the kid is many, many steps beyond being confused. They don't understand what's going on, and so they start acting out against this the source of confusion, which is the school, the curriculum, the teachers. I hate the teachers, I hate school, um, why are you sending me to school? Why do I have to go to school? All that sort of thing all stems from the fact that that they don't understand what they're studying.

SPEAKER_00: 4:02

Okay. And while that is a very simple and direct statement, let's um clarify and walk through each step of that. So, how does this process of misunderstanding leading to bad behavior start? What is the the inception of this?

SPEAKER_01: 4:20

Okay. Well, let's get into something like middle school where the student is expected to be able to read and it's assumed that they have the English skills to be able to take on new subjects. History, math, okay, more advanced subjects. Well, those assumptions are faulty because in elementary school they did not learn the elements of the English language. In fact, they probably didn't even know what elementary meant. Most kids don't. Okay. They don't really get oriented to what is happening. They're just sort of moved around, taught certain things, tested on those things. They do well or not well, and then they're moved forward from there. And they they're they're never clarifying they, the schools, the classrooms, um the child themselves are not taught to to clarify and back up and go, wait a minute, I I need to back up and master this stuff. I only got a B. That's that's only 85% or whatever. Uh I have to get a hundred percent. I mean, you would not expect a child who could tie their shoes like 80 or 85 percent of the time. They need to do do it well every time, right? And yet the expectations as we move forward in school go down and down and down and down to where like it's it's okay not to be really, really good at things. And so you start getting into their expectations. Uh, they want to be good at things, but they don't know really what they're learning about. It's not announced to them. Um, they say, Well, we're gonna teach you geometry. What does geometry mean? Nobody, nobody explains this to them. Why and why do they need to learn it? And let's just take that one word apart. There are glossaries for these things. You can look up these things, you can help your child along the way. Um, but if they don't know that geometry has something to do with geo means earth, and metry, well, that's measure. And it was a system that was uh devised to basically measure the earth and divide up the earth. You've got such things as um property boundaries and that sort of thing that we know about later. Uh when we become adults and we're buying and selling houses and that sort of thing, or renting apartments or whatever. What's what's common property? You have to divide up the land, you know. Well, that's that's geometry. And it has to be connected to something that they understand. They might not have some buried deep passion for learning how to divide up the land, but it can be it can be it can be brought to their attention that just in the normal business of life, they're gonna need to know how to do this stuff, they're gonna know how to divide up shapes and sizes and things, and and you can find out what they are interested in, and then relate the geometry to that. And the same is true of algebra. What does that word mean? Calculus, who knows what that means? Like all these different things. But but if they're gonna study it, they need to know that they can study it and study it extremely well. Because that's not done, they just pile on all this confusion, so they're doing the best they can, and they're they really are genuinely trying to do the best they can if they're if they're making any effort at all. So they're caught in the situation where they're participating in something that doesn't really make any sense to them. They're being criticized for not knowing things, but then it's also not being taught to them. And so you get this whole reaction of acting out and misbehaving, and that just whether that's um throwing gumballs at the teacher while she's writing on the chalkboard, uh, whatever it is, um, that they're going to find some way to attack the source of confusion and upset. And that's where it really comes from.

SPEAKER_00: 8:46

Okay. Makes sense. And then or it doesn't make sense, but makes sense. But once they are in this state where they have confusions and they're starting to act out, um, what's the progression from there as far as quality of education and behavior going forward in their in their educational years?

SPEAKER_01: 9:08

Well, um, like what what happens like how far can it go? Is that what we're we're asking? Yeah, I think so. So most most kids, I mean, you know, innately, inherently, they they they they are good people. Okay. Um there's there, no matter how many bad things that they're doing, it's not because they're they're you can't just say, well, well, they're a bad kid. Well, you okay, they're doing they're doing certain things. But but they have an inherent goodness in them that causes them to that they don't come home and announce, hey mom, guess what I was doing today? I was throwing gumballs at the teacher. They know that that's wrong, right? They don't announce this to you, right? So they're hiding these things. And so you get this progression of they're building up all these things that they've done all day long, all week long, all semester long, all year long, and it piles up lots and lots of secrets. You you don't know about the gumballs that they were throwing, you don't know about uh the the uh kicking the other kid's desk just because they felt like they needed something to do uh while the teacher was writing a bunch of gobbledygook on the on the uh blackboard. All these things add up, and now you've got a situation where the child and the parents, there's a total disconnect, and they're really uh sort of hiding all these things, and they really would like to quit school, and maybe they've tried, maybe they've skipped class, they got in trouble for it, they are punished, and and and and now everybody's watching them even more closely, more scrutiny. Maybe they even have to go and stay after school for that special program or go in on Saturday or whatever for extra studies, all these little systems are developed. Um, but they hate it, they hate it, and and so what do they do to stay in that environment as a solution? They just start memorizing. Okay, and this is really where it goes south. It's like a big toboggan slide because um their grades were failing, they were not understanding things, but now they've got the screws are put to them, and so the discipline goes in, and now they've got to study. And so they start studying and memorizing and passing tests, and they develop all these tricks, and people teach them tricks for how to pass tests, how to pass tests. Maybe the grades come up, and they they're finally like, now this is being validated. Yay, the grades are going up, and so it's like, well, this is this this works. They can just memorize all this crap and write it all down and pass some tests. They went from getting D's and C's up to getting B's and B pluses. Occasionally they're getting A's, and it's like, oh, this is great, this is great. But they're they are no participant to their to their education. They they they've they've not been participating, they've not been interested since third grade or something, or kindergarten, when they were doing fun stuff. And learning is fun, and learning now is no longer any fun, and all they're hoping to do at this point is get out of school. Okay, and some kids uh don't fall through this educational gap, and they they do retain their interest, and they are they do want to go to college or they do want to go to trade school or learn a craft, and and that's what propels them forward. But even those kids can be helped because they were not held to a 100% total certainty standard on everything they were studying, they're just propelled forward by a passion, right? So all these kids can be helped. Um, but the the ones that are really going south and really misbehaving, and uh uh now passing tests and so forth. Well, that doesn't mean that the misbehavior ends, okay, because the passing test stuff is just a nice shield to hide behind while they're uh driving their grandpa's uh car into uh a mailbox, those the big ones on the corner, you know, uh uh and and doing all kinds of things. Um these things, they just continue to to happen. No, no kid wakes up one morning and and goes and says, uh writes down things that I'm gonna do this week. I'm going to crash my grandpa's car, I'm going to steal money from my mom. I mean, it doesn't still, this is not what it's just they get caught into a trap, they don't know how to get out of it, right? That's that's that's what we could just talk about. How far does it go? Well, they wind up in jail, or they wind up doing this and that, they wind up as drug addicts. Sometimes they wind up dead. Okay, we've all we've all heard the stories, and it does happen. I mean, it's a very unfortunate thing, but it really all comes from the lack of education. Okay, and that's the missing thing. They are not that that kid who made all the bad choices that wound up dead, they're not a bad kid. They were no different than any other kid. They just were more confused. That's all. Just more confused. And when you're very, very confused, you do stupid things. That's all there is to it.

SPEAKER_00: 14:48

Wow, such a powerful but simple concept. And honestly, I just have to say, for me, until I saw it in myself and many others, it was a bit of an unreal concept that not understanding these basic things, whether they were in life or school or usually early education, actually caused or directly affected the person so that they then were in these situations where they're committing, you know, things they shouldn't be doing, or getting involved with people they shouldn't be, or doing these things that they know they shouldn't. It's it's almost magical when you go back and clear these areas up that these other things just follow up. It's true. You know, just yeah, just speaking from my own observation of them and whatnot. So well, let's take a look at this then. Um, let's say a parent has a child who's involved in you know various, you know, maybe it's drugs, maybe it's just, you know, vandalism of a minor uh nature, or whatever it is. How can they go from the child sitting in front of them all upset, not wanting to participate in a conversation, to finding these early areas of misunderstanding and confusion? What's the process that a parent can actually apply?

SPEAKER_01: 16:12

The parents are going to have parent or parents, whoever's you know handling this child, uh, they're gonna have to make it safe for the child at this point to to basically confess or tell or fess up about whatever really is going on. Okay, and just like you can ask a crying child what they're crying about, what they're upset about, and and continue to ask, well, what else are you upset about? What else are you upset about? Because these things ball up and get into a big, you know, a big uh swarming mass. You can you can ask anybody and ask people on the street, but you certainly would be interested in asking your child, well, okay, well, what else have you done? What else did you do? Are you throwing so you're throwing you're throwing gumballs at the teacher? All right. Are you also smoking weed or taking you know some other kids' medication? Or I have never tried anything on Don anymore. Yeah, well, okay, well, what have you done? You can just right get it all out of the table, find out what's going on. Let's make sure we've we've cleared the air. And it and it can't be so that they then get punished for it. Okay, and and there there might be some disciplinary steps that occur at some point or whatever. That's not what we're trying to do right now at this stage of the game. We just want to get the kid into communication. What have they been doing? What's going on? Let's clear the air, let's see how how far has it gone. Okay. Well, you know, are you skipping school? Are you doing this? Are you doing that? Um, all these things can be found out. That should be uh uh not take long, it's just a matter of like being interested and making it safe for the kid to say what they've what they've done, uh, who they've been hanging around with. They they know what they've done, they'll tell you, it's not that difficult. Um and then and then immediately we go, okay, fine, you did all that stuff, let's back it up. And and we're always talking about backing things up, but it's not just it's not just a matter of like, okay, they're in seventh grade and their grades are failing, so we now let's hire some tutors or let's get really interested in teaching them geometry or algebra or whatever it is that they're studying. Who cares about that? Right? That's it's not what they were being taught last week that is the problem. Okay, they don't have, if they're at this stage of the thing, we know that they don't have the study skills that should have been learned when they were eight, nine, ten, eleven years old. And so we have to back it up to that. We have to go back and master some stuff. Let's let's get them to master reading. Almost almost nobody has mastered reading. Okay? I mean, I work with adults, professionals, people with master's degrees, doctors who who still struggle with their studies because they are not experts at reading. Do you think this is it happens all the time? What you know, you ask a medical doctor how how do you continue education go? Well, it's always it's always a struggle. It's just a bunch of words and stuff, right? So any kid, sixth grade, seventh grade, eighth grade, fourth grade, wherever they're starting to go off the rails and get into misbehavior and stuff, they can be they can benefit greatly by backing up and mastering the stuff that they never learned. Let's fill in those gaps, let's find out what that is. And uh and and make them really proud to be extremely good at some simple basic things. And reading it is is universal because no matter no matter what they're studying, whether it's written text, they're studying, they're they're they're going online, even watching YouTube, YouTube university, okay, they're still studying in English. Okay. And so let's make them expert at at getting the information that they want. They want to know how to fix that lawnmower. They want to know whatever it is that they would like to be able to do. Okay. Let's put them in control of the fact that they can go get that information, study it, and put it to immediate use. And let's make them expert at that. Okay. And and it might start with let's master setting the table the way that the parents would like them to set the table. All right, let's master that. Let's master, and it just kind of goes out on a in a sphere of control from tying their shoes and helping to set the table to what maybe they're really interested in in cooking and helping out in the kitchen and stuff. Well, great. That's what master chefs are made from. Are from people who want to do that. Well, let's let's help them along. Let's help them, you know, or let's let them help bake those cookies, make those meals. And it might not be perfect to start with, but they can look, learn, and practice how to uh cook meals in the kitchen or help dad do with whatever he's doing, right? Let's make them let's make them proud of being expert at certain simple things and then just bring it forward.

SPEAKER_00: 21:50

So simple. Very, very easy to apply. So hopefully any parents or uh young adults who are looking to learn faster or more effectively and are listening to this uh can take that and apply it. Um be sure to not, I would just say, overcomplicate it, even though this sounds sometimes extremely simple. Uh like Mike was saying, and I love he tells me these stories about doctors that he's tutoring, quote unquote, who are still having trouble with basic words and basic understanding of an English language, and it totally changes their ability to then apply and get better results in their practice. Uh yeah, it's it's so useful for everyone. Well, okay, great. Well, let's leave it at that. Um, be sure to tune in to our next episode, and we'll have more value for you. Thanks. Have a great rest of your day.