Guide · Understand International
Observing a situation without interpreting it too quickly
"He's not trying." "She's attention-seeking." Those sentences arrive fast, and they close a conversation before it starts. An observation opens it instead: it describes what happened, when, and what surrounded it. It is also the only material a school or a clinician can actually work with. Here is how to go about it.
Key points
- A fact can be filmed; an interpretation cannot. That is the fastest test between the two.
- Interpretations are not forbidden; they simply have to be labeled as such, and kept separate.
- A useful observation carries three things: what came before, what happened, what followed.
- The moments that go well tell you as much as the hard ones.
- Observing is not about proving something. It is about noticing what you had not noticed.
The same moment, put two ways
The left column can be discussed. The right one gets defended or denied, and the meeting exhausts itself there.
Observation
- "He put his pencil down after four minutes and looked out of the window."
- "She asked three times what she was supposed to do."
- "He got up after the noisy group went past in the corridor."
Interpretation
- "He isn't motivated."
- "She doesn't listen."
- "He's looking for attention."
Why the difference matters so much
An interpretation assigns an intention to the child. It puts everyone on moral ground (willing, unwilling) where there is nothing to adjust and where somebody has to be wrong.
A fact can be checked and compared. Two adults who saw the same scene and describe it in facts often discover they did not see the same moment: one saw the refusal, the other saw what came before it.
It is also what professionals can genuinely use. In an appointment, a short record of dated facts is worth far more than a list of adjectives, however accurate.
How to record it
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Note three things each time: what came before, what happened, what followed. It is usually the "before" that is missing.
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Add the date and the time. A pattern in the clock sometimes appears where a psychological cause was being looked for.
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Write what a camera would have caught: actions, words, durations.
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Keep your hypotheses separate and explicit: "I wonder whether…". They are valuable, as long as they do not disguise themselves as facts.
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Record two or three moments that went well: they describe the conditions that work.
The most common traps
- "Always" and "never": almost always inaccurate, and they undermine everything else you say.
- Recording only the bad days: the picture stops resembling the child.
- Looking for a single cause: most situations stack several.
- Confusing frequency with intensity: rare but overwhelming is not the same as daily but mild.
- Describing the child rather than the situation: the situation is the part that can change.
Go further with AtyKids
AtyKids supports the adult, without ever making a diagnosis or replacing professionals.