📝 What I’d Tell My NQT Self About SEMH

What I’d Tell My NQT Self About SEMH: Regulation, Relationships and Rethinking Behaviour in the Classroom

👋 Welcome to SEMH Education

I post weekly strategies and insights for professionals supporting children with social, emotional, and mental health (SEMH) needs.

I’m Kieran, a former teacher and current Youth Justice Education Officer. Each week, I share evidence-informed tools, practical advice, and real-world reflections to help you create safer, more inclusive learning environments.

📌 In this post: What I’d tell myself as an NQT about children with SEMH needs

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Reflections on the lessons I wish I’d known sooner 🧠💬

There’s a piece of advice often thrown around at new teachers like confetti:
“Don’t smile before Christmas.”
And I’ll be honest, I tried it. I was told this was a standard practice in primary school (K-12), and I attempted it with my first-ever Year 5 class. It was awful. It didn’t work and it made me feel so uncomfortable!

If I could go back and speak to my NQT self, I’d tell him this:
That bit of ‘wisdom’ is 100x more damaging than helpful, especially for children with SEMH needs. Connection is your superpower. Not control. Not compliance. Not charisma. Connection. 🤝

There are more unhelpful bits of advice thrown at newly qualified teachers. I’ve packaged some of them in this post and outlined why I think they’re incorrect and what I would do differently!

❌ “Don’t Smile Before Christmas” Is a Trauma-Triggering Lie

Children with social, emotional and mental health (SEMH) needs, especially those impacted by trauma, don’t benefit from power-based behaviour management.
What they need is predictable, warm, consistent adults. Being hot and cold with them creates insecurity. It erodes trust.

The idea that emotional distance creates authority is a myth.
For many of our most vulnerable pupils, that distance mirrors neglect. It echoes abandonment. It whispers, “You’re not safe here.” 😔

It compounds and escalates existing issues the children may have, specifically around attachment.

There are so many other ways to build those positive relationships with children. Instead of being unapproachable, overly strict and unpredictable. Celebrate their wins, and plan the day appropriately.

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I’ve been thinking about running some small, practical webinars for anyone supporting children with SEMH needs. They’d be around 45 minutes, with time for questions at the end (15 minutes), and just 10–20 spaces so it stays useful and personal. Would you be up for that?

Here’s the kind of stuff we’d cover:

• What SEMH really means, and why every teacher needs to understand it

• Behaviour as communication: spotting what’s really going on beneath the surface

• What trauma-informed practice actually looks like in a real classroom

• The 6 stages of crisis, and how to respond helpfully at each point

• De-escalation that works (without relying on restraint or punishment)

• Regulation tools that don’t require a sensory room or a huge budget

• Understanding exclusions, off-site directions, and how to advocate safely

• Reviewing your behaviour policy through an SEMH lens

• Staff wellbeing and burnout: setting boundaries without guilt

• Real stories from schools, what helped, what didn’t, and what we can learn

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🔄 Regulation Before Education

One of the most powerful things I’ve learned is this:
You can’t teach a dysregulated brain. 🧠💥
It’s a biological truth. No amount of detentions, call-outs, or teacher voice can override a child stuck in a fight, flight or freeze state.

If I could go back, I’d hand my NQT self two toolkits:
🧺 A bank of up-regulation strategies (for flat, disconnected pupils)
🧺 A bank of down-regulation strategies (for children on the edge of crisis)

Regulation activities do take up lesson time.
But time spent regulating is time invested, not lost.
Because the alternative? Supporting a child through crisis, rupture, exclusion, or suspension, often at the cost of their learning and your wellbeing.

It feels like you’re abandoning the lesson and you’ll never get that time back, but pausing the lesson to regulate a class is much more beneficial!

I’ve tried too many times to teach a class that wasn’t engaged and I’ve lost them, not only for the rest of the lesson but often for the rest of the day.

I’ve gone home exhausted, not had the energy to cook properly for myself or look after myself. Sound familiar?

It’s much healthier for us and more beneficial for the children to ensure they’re regulated before the teaching starts!

🧍‍♂️ Model It All. Every Time.

Children with SEMH needs often haven’t had safe, consistent adults to show them how to manage life.
So many of the “soft skills” we take for granted, sharing, repairing relationships, handling disappointment, are skills they’ve never seen modelled. Or they’ve been taught differently.

We can’t just expect emotional literacy. We have to teach it, name it, show it, and scaffold it.

That means:

• 🗣 Narrating your own emotions: “I’m feeling a bit frustrated, so I’m going to take a deep breath before we start”

• 🤝 Modelling repair: “I noticed we had a tricky moment yesterday. I’m glad you’re back. Let’s try again.”

• 🧠 Building emotional vocabulary daily.

• 👀 Using displays, routines, and expectations to show what regulation and relationships look like.

💡 This is echoed in countless EHCPs, where “support with emotional regulation” is listed as a key provision. That provision starts with you.

The most useful thing, especially as a male in a primary setting, was to narrate my own emotions most of the time. It provided the children with countless examples of how to describe what they’re feeling and how to navigate these emotions safely.

🎭 My NQT Self Tried to Be a Behaviour Manager

I kept order. I delivered content. I ticked boxes. But I wasn’t truly teaching the children who needed me most.

I didn’t know that behind the shouting was shame. That behind the shutdown was fear.
That what I saw as defiance, was often dysregulation.

If I could go back, I wouldn’t change the children.
I’d change me.

💬 Final Thoughts: Connection Over Control

If you’re a new teacher reading this, please know, you don’t have to choose between being respected and being warm. Firm boundaries and deep compassion are not mutually exclusive.

Children with SEMH needs don’t need you to be perfect.
They need you to be safe, predictable, and human. 🛟

And if you’re not a new teacher, but this still hits home, maybe it’s time to forgive your younger self for what you didn’t yet know. Because every day in this job, we get another chance to show up differently.

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