Was it really rude?

The other evening, my son clapped at me and my partner to get our attention. Not a gentle clap., not an excited clap, the same clap he uses in the classroom. For a moment, I found myself wondering how many adults would have described that behaviour as rude. Then I started thinking about where he had learned it.

Children spend much of their lives being interrupted by adults. We ask them to stop what they are doing, stop what they are saying, stop what they are thinking about and direct their attention elsewhere. Often, we expect this immediately. In schools, adults use a range of attention-gaining strategies. We clap, count down, call names, ring bells, raise hands and use visual signals. Children learn that these behaviours mean "stop and listen".

So when my son needed our attention, he used a strategy that he has repeatedly seen modelled by adults. He clapped. The interesting part was not the clap itself. The interesting part was how differently adults and children might interpret the same behaviour.

Many children, particularly neurodivergent children, are regularly told that they are being rude, disrespectful or inappropriate. Yet these concepts are often based on unwritten social rules that adults assume children understand. Think about how often we hear: "Don't speak to me like that." "That was rude." "You need to apologise."

But how often do we stop and ask whether the child actually understood the social rule they are accused of breaking?

For many neurodivergent children, social expectations are not instinctive. They are learned. What seems obvious to adults may not be obvious at all. A child who interrupts may simply have an urgent thought, a child who corrects an adult may be prioritising accuracy over social hierarchy, a child who speaks bluntly may be communicating honestly rather than intending to offend. And a child who claps to gain attention may simply be using a strategy that has worked every day in their classroom.

This is not about excusing behaviour. It is about understanding it. When we focus solely on whether a behaviour is socially acceptable, we can miss the far more important question: What was the child trying to achieve? Behaviour is communication. The meaning behind it matters.

As adults, we shape children's understanding of the world every day. They learn from what we say, but they also learn from what we do. Sometimes the behaviours we challenge in children are reflections of behaviours they have seen modelled by adults.

Perhaps before asking whether a child was being rude, we should first ask - What rule do we think they broke? And have we ever explicitly taught it? Because for many neurodivergent children, the problem is not a lack of respect, it is that they are being judged against social rules that nobody realised were invisible.