Rethinking Behavioural Choice: A lesson from Admiral Nelson
It’s not often the words “Oh look, That’s Nelson’s Column” strike me with terror, but on this occasion they truly did.
I hadn’t planned on driving through London. In fact, I had planned very specifically not to. But there I was – one wrong turn and suddenly the world narrowed into a blur of black railings, statues, and startled tourists. My long-standing unease with London traffic instantly fused with the thought that I might accidentally drive across Trafalgar square, starting my very own battle. For a few surreal seconds I half-expected to feature on the ten-o’clock news as “the woman who chased the pigeons”.
My heart pounded, my jaw locked, and my vision tunnelled until I could see little more than the boot of the car in front. I could hear my brain trying to be reasonable – it’s the same car, same rules, same road – but logic was no match for the ancient wiring of threat.
That’s the amygdala at work: the part of the brain evolved to spot danger and take over before we have time to think. Paul Gilbert’s three-systems model helps explain what was happening. The threat system, designed to keep us alive, had seized control – flooding me with adrenaline and preparing me for mortal perils far more ancient than London traffic. The drive system, which usually fuels focus and achievement, was momentarily silenced. And my soothing system, which allows calm, connection, and perspective, was nowhere to be found. I was wide-eyed, rigid with fear, and running on instinct alone.
If that’s what happened to me, as an adult with years of perspective and self-talk to draw on, what happens to a child whose whole life has taught them that danger is never far away?
For a child raised in violence or even in constant criticism, the threat system becomes a frequent, sometimes permanent, visitor. Their brains learn vigilance like a second language. They live on the lookout – for tone, expression, movement – scanning for signs that something might turn. While as adults we can tell ourselves this isn’t real danger, children don’t have that luxury. Perspective-taking is still developing; the body’s alarm bell rings loud, and there’s no grown-up voice inside yet to say steady on, you’re safe.
In those moments, behaviour isn’t chosen; it’s trained.
The lashing out, shutting down, or bolting away isn’t defiance – it’s survival. Years of reinforcement have wired the response long before classroom rules or reward charts ever appear.
So when we ask a child to “make better choices,” we might be missing the point. We’re appealing to the part of the brain that’s currently offline. What we call “bad behaviour” is often the body doing exactly what it was taught to do when threat arrives.
That doesn’t mean we do nothing. Far from it. But it does mean we start earlier – before their version of the Admiral looms into view. We build capacity before we expect choice.
In compassion-based education, that means helping children learn what soothing feels like and how to create it. Simple daily practices – breathing to settle the body, grounding through the senses, compassionate imagery, noticing what calm feels like – all begin to train the soothing system. Over time those small moments become a kind of internal map: a route back from threat to steadiness.
I’ve seen it happen. The child who once threw chairs now recognises the first surge of panic and quietly asks for a space to breathe. That isn’t defiance contained; it’s fear understood. It’s a nervous system learning it has more than one route through the world.
These aren’t soft options. They’re the neurological scaffolding for self-regulation and learning. Without them, “make a better choice” is just noise over the roar of a terrified nervous system. With them, a child can begin to pause, reflect, and choose differently – not because we told them to, but because we’ve helped them build the capacity to do so.
If you’d like to see some ways to put this into practice, try these animations: Emotional First Aid and the Creating Calm When Facing Change and there are excellent free resources on the Compassionate Mind Foundation website explaining the science and exercises behind this work.
There is no choice when you’ve no knowledge of another way. But we can teach that “other way” – patiently, daily, compassionately – so that when a child’s own Trafalgar Square looms into view, they know how to steady the wheel and keep going.
Find out more about how these skills can be brought to your school – through training, workshops, or whole-staff development – and begin building the capacity for calm before the next moment of threat arrives.
