Connections Over Compliance: Rewiring Our Perceptions of Discipline

The developing brains of our children need to "feel" safe. Children who carry chronic behavioral challenges are often met with reactive and punitive practices that can potentially reactivate the developing stress response systems. This book deeply addresses the need for co-regulatory and relational touch point practices, shifting student-focused behavior management protocols to adult regulated brain and body states which are brain aligned, preventive, and relational discipline protocols. This new lens for discipline benefits all students by reaching for sustainable behavioral changes through brain state awareness rather than compliance and obedience.

“In Connections Over Compliance Dr. Desautels redefines the educational process with an innovative neuroscience-informed and compassionate perspective. This transformative volume provides a glimpse into the optimistic future of education and radically dispels strategies vested in antiquated behavioral models of learning that have been engrained in education dogma. Through a transdisciplinary approach, we gain a deep respect for the behaviorally challenged child’s attempts to survive in a threatening world, we become aware that learning is dependent on a neurophysiological state that is only efficiently and effectively available when the child has trusting relationships with teachers, and we learn how these relationships can be leveraged to enable the child to feel sufficiently safe to dampen threat reactions and to spontaneously become social and cognitively available to learn. In this accessible book, Dr. Desautels provides tools and exercises to restructure the classroom environment to effectively meet the needs of the most vulnerable and behaviorally reactive children to feel safe in the classroom and to leverage these feelings into cognitive and social successes.”
-- Dr. Stephen Porges, Neuroscientist, Author, and Creator of the Polyvagal Theory

“Connections Over Compliance is a gift for teachers, principals, university professors, state and federal departments of education, and for parents. Even more importantly, it is a blessing for all the students whose teachers, support staff, administrators, and parents read, understand, and apply the wealth of information, insight, and practical suggestions contained within the book. Dr. Desautels does an excellent job of translating complicated neuroscience concepts into immediately accessible language. She makes the information real and applicable through the provision of examples and a wealth of resources.”
-- Beth Tolley, Director of Educational Advocacy, Alliance Against Seclusion and Restraint, Board Member, NAMI Virginia (National Alliance on Mental Illness), Board Member, Early Childhood Mental Health Virginia

“Punitive school discipline and zero-tolerance approaches are not working for our schools. The cycle of suspension, expulsion, corporal punishment, restraint, and seclusion are leading our children down the school-to-prison pipeline. In Connections Over Compliance, Dr. Desautels provides a roadmap and resources to help educators move to a brain-aligned preventive discipline model based on modern neuroscience. Dr. Desautels explains that regulation, control, empathy, and kindness are skills that need to be taught and modeled just like math and reading. We know better and must do better for our children.”
-- Guy Stephens, Founder and Executive Director, Alliance Against Seclusion and Restraint

“Dr. Lori Desautels provides educators powerful science-based insights, built on years of study and practical application, to enhance their understanding of themselves as teachers and the effectiveness with which they connect with affected students in supporting their growth into adulthood.”
-- James P. Bien, MD, MPH, FAAP, Chief Medical Officer, VP Quality and Patient Safety, Pediatrician, Indiana University Health Arnett