The biggest obstacle to cognitive development and learning are the avoidance and defense strategies that a child has developed to protect themselves from excessive demands. Being aware of this as a caregiver opens up completely new ways of understanding and dealing with them, so that some of these development-restricting behaviors do not have to develop in the first place.
With such completely unconscious mechanisms, the child tries to compensate for its primary difficulties and maintain its familiar „status quo“ in which it feels safe. At the same time, however, it avoids new experiences that would be necessary as a sensory-motor basis in order to expand its learning or develop it in the first place.
# Self-limiting behaviors: Avoidance of confrontation with the unknown
The purpose of self-restrictive behaviors (Waldon called them ‚self-handicapping behaviors‘) is to avoid and prevent confrontation with the unknown by evading external demands, usually by using their own body. The underlying process can be described roughly as follows:
- The child experiences itself as impaired in some way, e.g. because it does not understand, is afraid or finds something sensory unpleasant.
- It therefore feels insecure, stressed, ashamed or embarrassed,
- and therefore tries to avoid this unpleasant feeling or to avoid embarrassment by avoiding the situation, i.e.
- It takes refuge, so to speak, in the feeling of ‚I can't‘ in order to cover up discomfort, insecurity, shame and fear.
- As a result, the child avoids new experiences and activities, and
- in this way prevents it from learning new things and developing further
Whenever someone offers or suggests something to him, e.g. putting his spoon in the dishwasher or a block in a container, Wang (15 years old) repeatedly hits his head with the flat of his hand, screaming, so that it bangs and his mother (in shock) usually lets go of him immediately. Then he grabs his cell phone and his blanket, pulls them over his head and hides in his bed. For hours every day.
These are all behaviors that avoid active participation, e.g.
- Refusal to participate by shouting, fighting back or ‚No, no, no!‘
- slide off the chair or under the table to escape
- repetitive behaviors, e.g. bobbing, flapping hands
- Stiffening of the body or extreme passivity, e.g. becoming stiff or limp
- attacking the adult in defense: biting, scratching, hitting, throwing the head backwards
- turn your head away, look away
- Screaming, tantrums, crying, tears
- Throwing or deliberately breaking objects, sometimes with laughter
- wetting or defecating as avoidance behavior to then go to the toilet
- Seemingly social behavior, chatting or talking to avoid dealing with the task at hand
These behaviors were originally intended to avoid stress and anxiety from expectations and the feeling of excessive demands on their understanding, but can result in the child physically or emotionally escaping from the situation, fending off the unwanted demand, or developing compensatory, self-gratifying behaviors that make the situation bearable for them. But if they are not broken down early by a return to appropriate play, these initial protective measures can easily become self-perpetuating habits, almost like a kind of addiction, keeping the child stuck in their own predictable world and comfort zone where they feel safe. The problem is that they prevent them from engaging in new experiences and learning and are one of the main causes of their increasing developmental delays, frustrations and learning difficulties.
# Developmentally inhibited behaviors: Insisting on the familiar
Retarding behaviors (Waldon called them ‚retardation behaviors‘) aim to avoid new experiences and insist on the status quo. They typically occur in children with low drive and motivation, who tend to make as little effort as possible and take shortcuts. As a result, they receive less reinforcement for their reduced activities, which further lowers their motivation and continues in a downward spiral. This is exactly the opposite of what is required for optimal learning development.
The child clings to the tried and trusted as much as possible and often uses objects to reinforce this safe, pleasant effect, e.g.
- insisting on the same and familiar things, e.g. constantly holding something in your hand, lining up objects, building towers, turning things around
- Deviations are avoided or combated
- „Doing“ or dealing with a task is avoided or postponed
- provocative or triumphant behavior with high pleasure gain, e.g. throwing things or sweeping them off the table, spitting, laughing, screaming, making a fool of tasks
- Intimidating behavior, e.g. sudden scratching, pinching, head-butting or other aggressive, as well as auto-aggressive, behavior
- Negativity and anti-attitude, i.e. the child refuses everything or turns everything into its opposite
Screaming, screeching, squealing or throwing things is often a reflex reaction, especially with non-verbal children, which quickly proves to be very effective and can quickly become established if the adult admonishes the child each time to stop screaming immediately.
‚I don't get on at all with Taylor (9 years). As soon as I want to start an activity with him and put things on the table, he just tries to stop it by flapping around, trying to sweep things off the table or throw them across the room, pulling my hair and laughing out loud as if it's a hilarious game. For him. But not for me. Now I don't even dare try to do anything with him anymore,‘ his mother complains.
# Self-deprivation behaviors: Maximum feedback with minimum effort
Self-deprivation behaviors (Waldon called them „self-delighting behaviors“) are characterized by maximum feedback, usually with high pleasure gain, with minimal effort. They require neither planning nor adaptation, neither risk nor learning. They could be compared to a kind of inner wellness zone: a state in which it is warm, familiar and predictable, in which sensory stimuli can be precisely dosed and controlled by the child himself, and in which he feels comfortable and satisfied. This can also include sensory sensations that we might consider unpleasant or even painful.
Frequent self-deprivation behaviors are, for example.
- swing, turn, flap your hands, jump, hop, run, vocalize
- Comfort zone behaviors to create sensory bliss states such as endless pouring or trickling (with water, rice, etc.), self-stimulation
- Head banging, screaming, knocking
- Screen addiction and media consumption
While these behaviors usually originate as a protective function, for self-regulation or to reduce excessive demands and inner tension, they also impair development. In this „feel-good mode“, the child feels no need to explore new things, make an effort or engage with the unpredictable. Learning, relationships and further development are left out of the equation as long as the child remains in this self-generated pleasurable retreat.
As the child can generate these intense sensory impressions and sensory states of pleasure themselves and with their own body, they can quickly become habitual and addictive. Children who have discovered how to generate these sensory stimuli themselves in their own bodies often insist on spending much or even most of their time in their states of bliss and as a result do not gain any new experiences and learn very little. The child thus quickly falls into a vicious circle and a dead end in which it develops no other skills and no tolerance for coping with frustration.
Chandra (4 years) takes every opportunity to run a cup full at the tap in the bathroom and pour it back and forth with a second cup. Every day. For almost 2 years. If you try to stop her, she screams and bites.
If they are prevented from immersing themselves in their pleasant comfort zone behaviors, such children quickly explode in violent outbursts or tantrums, as they lack the skills and experience to tolerate and deal with other (less blissful) states. This is why self-deprivation behaviors are usually also a form of self-limiting behavior.
Alvaro (6 years) spends every occupational therapy session in the cherry stone box, dipping into the stones with a whoop, tossing them back and forth or letting them trickle endlessly, whereby he doesn't even seem to notice the attempts of the curative teacher to come into contact with him or play together. When she tries to force herself on him, he looks at her but screams and does everything he can to bite or pinch her. Only since she has understood the function and effects of these behaviors has she been able to act again and deal with his emotional outbursts in an understanding and supportive way. And keep the cherry stone box closed at times.
Sometimes these behaviours also go hand in hand with a kind of fetishization, i.e. an extremely pleasurable and at the same time compulsive obsession with an object or a certain action, e.g. when a child absolutely has to touch bare feet or legs in nylon tights or ‚must‘ throw everything, still insists on wearing a diaper at the age of 13 or insists on grabbing every woman's breast. Overcoming these compulsive habits can often be very problematic, exhausting and time-consuming.
# Effort-avoiding behaviors: Complete tasks as quickly as possible
While small children seek out exertion in order to feel themselves physically, and are satisfied when they feel ‚I can do something and make a difference‘, the opposite, i.e. effort-avoiding behavior, can usually be observed in ‚early‘ children. These are short-cut behaviors that often severely limit the child's range of experience, as the focus is not on doing and experiencing, but rather on getting done, i.e. the child does not do anything.
- Tasks as quickly as possible to get ‚it‘ over with, e.g. grabs as many things as possible at once
- as little as possible, e.g. using only one hand or leaning on one arm
- Minor floppy movements, including wiping things off the table, throwing them away or beside it, or simply dropping them
- only the bare minimum, without making an effort
- pretends to participate (but not in the sense of a symbolic as-if game!)
‚When I started doing Waldon with him, Kilian (13 years old) always wanted to do everything ‚fast fast fast‘, as if to just get it over with as quickly as possible, or by trying to take several blocks at the same time. It took some time for him to relax and really notice what he was doing and what was happening in front of him. In the beginning, I had to guide him very clearly and unambiguously so that he could find his way out of this entrenched pattern,‘ his mother reports.
Some children use the fact that they can talk to talk more and do less. Common distraction maneuvers include asking questions or conditions, joking around or engaging the adult in a dialogue or argument to distract from the current activity. In this way, such effort-avoiding habits also quickly lead to a vicious circle: because less engagement means fewer experiences, which in turn leads to the child not developing their general understanding, so that the child's secondary limitations continue to increase.
# Dead endsHabits
The category of dead-end habits can also be described, i.e. activities or behaviors that lead nowhere in terms of learning development and represent a type of development-inhibiting behavior. These are repetitive and restrictive behaviors that are usually fun for the child in some way - because they are enjoyable and require little or no effort, but generate few new experiences. Due to their repetitive nature, and the child's intense resistance to variation and new experiences, these activities become increasingly narrow and restrictive - and can act as a self-created straitjacket from which the child can no longer escape on their own.
These are often behaviors that are (mistakenly) considered more advanced than free exploratory play by the adults around the child and are therefore often highly valued and encouraged, such as.
- Naming and stringing together letters, numbers, colors, shapes
- Turn plates or other objects and make them spin
- Building and knocking over towers to generate excitement
- Leafing through picture books as a comfort zone, often without really looking at the pictures
- Wooden train games, car racing tracks or marble runs with prefabricated parts where the variation possibilities are very limited, e.g. if the child only rolls trains or marbles around
- Electronics and computer toys, e.g. iPad, toys with buttons to press, Tiptoi, youtube videos in English (especially if English is not the national language or surrounding culture),
- Insistence on constant background music such as „auditory wallpaper“, e.g. TV must always be on, nursery rhymes in a continuous loop, Tony Box, ...
‚Manfred (5 years old) loves making things spin. He's really great at it. Much better than me,‘ says his mother with pride in her voice. However, that's the only thing he does, every day and almost all day.
Understanding protection strategies as such
Some children may even say „Done! Done!“ to end the activity and participation quickly:
If you could even get Jürgen (8 years old) to sit down and engage in an activity, e.g. putting rings in a muffin tray and then sticking them on a stick, it quickly became clear how fragile this moment was. As soon as something didn't work right away or went even slightly differently than expected, he immediately shouted „Done! Done!“ and jumped up to run back and forth again.
This behavior is not defiance or conscious refusal, but an extremely effective protective strategy that has become a habit. Abruptly breaking off the situation enables the child to immediately end excessive demands and re-establish a sensory familiar state of inner security. Movement, escape and repetition are more readily available to him than endurance, perception or processing.
When the emergency exit becomes a dead end
However, this is precisely where a central developmental trap lies: every time this „Done!“ is reacted to by breaking off, giving in or switching to something familiar, the child unconsciously confirms the experience that avoidance is a way that works well. In this way, the behavior becomes more and more entrenched, while at the same time the ability to remain in a situation, endure slight irritations and integrate new experiences can hardly grow. Over the years, this dynamic leads to a massive developmental impasse in which Tyler, Wang, Manfred and Jürgen are still stuck years later. Not because they couldn't learn, but because they were never given the opportunity to build the necessary physical, sensory and emotional foundations. Learning is thus inextricably linked with stress, and avoidance with relief.
When development needs more support
The Waldon method places a different emphasis on precisely this point. It does not react to avoidance behavior, but undermines it by providing the child with support, predictability and physical security through clear, repeated movement offers, without saying anything, explaining anything or focusing attention on it.
Kilian's (now 15 years old) mother has succeeded in this, so that 2 years later he enjoys sitting at the table and spending almost a whole hour with her for a Waldon unit, moving things like blocks or rings back and forth, exploring the space around him with hand-held tools by tapping and scraping, and is tremendously happy that he can do and understand something because he has been able to develop his grasping and movement skills.
Understanding the functions of behavior
None of these behaviors are consciously intended or wanted, and it is important to understand the reasons and functions of these behavioral reactions. Only those who recognize what function a behaviour fulfils can react sensitively and support the child in its development of learning and behaviour. This also means reflecting on our own feelings, expectations and reactions, because only then can we really help the child to gain confidence and allow new experiences. Ultimately, it is not about „making behavior go away“, but about enabling safety so that the child can open up, try out new things and start learning.
Also, the same behavior can serve all of these functions. For example, circling objects may be a typical 12-month behavior (although, as Waldon points out, it is often considered more „advanced”) as well as a self-restrictive behavior mobilized to quickly generate positive reinforcement to counteract negative reinforcement (sudden fear). It can be a developmentally inhibitory behavior that children with a severely restricted behavioral repertoire often indulge in. And it is a classic Dead endshabit. For the sake of clarity, it is therefore sometimes useful to describe the self-restrictive or development-inhibiting functions.
Chapter from: Learning to learn with autistic children. Sibylle Janert (2026, Reinhard Verlag)
