Socially Maladjusted?

What does “socially maladjusted” even mean?

I’ve heard this label used for kids as young as five in school settings, and it has never felt right to me. The technical definition usually describes a student who understands social rules and expectations, but CHOOSES not to follow them. But I keep wondering: does that definition reflect what we now know about kids, the brain, trauma, stress, executive functioning, and behavior as communication? Because calling a child “socially maladjusted” feels outdated to me. It turns complicated behavior into something that sounds like a character flaw. And it puts a heavy label on kids before they’ve even had a real chance to figure out who they are.

Yet sometimes, that’s exactly what happens. Before kids have had time to grow into themselves, we start telling them who we think they are. How unfair is that?

A child’s brain is still developing well into young adulthood. So expecting a 9-year-old to think, regulate, and make decisions like an adult just doesn’t make sense. I’ve heard adults ask young kids, “Why did you do that?” And honestly, I’m not sure there’s a less helpful question. When we ask, “Why’d you do that?” we often assume the child made a clear, intentional choice. Maybe they did. Maybe they didn’t. But either way, our job is to teach kids and help them grow.

That question usually shuts kids down. It puts them on the defensive and makes it even harder for them to access the thinking, reflection, and language we’re asking them to use.

Here are some better starting points:
“What happened?”
“What was going on for you?”
“What do you need right now?”

So what’s the shift? Kids who act out NEED something. Dr. Ross Greene: says, "Kids do well if they can," because no child wants to be "socially maladjusted" or feel like a failure. Instead, what looks like defiance is actually a child who lacks the skill to do something different. These labels are a failure to our system, not flaws in the children.

In a restorative framework, we are encouraged to do things with kids, not to them. So I can’t help but wonder: what would a child say years later, as an adult, about being labeled “socially maladjusted” when they were young? Would they feel understood? Supported? Seen? Or would they feel like adults made a decision about who they were before anyone got curious about what they needed?

To me, this label can become a way to avoid the bigger questions: What are we asking this child to do? What environments are we creating? What needs are going unmet? And how might our systems, responses, or expectations be contributing to the behavior we’re seeing? Because when we don’t examine the conditions around children’s behavior, we risk making the child the problem instead of asking what support, safety, connection, or skill-building they may need.

I realize this is hard to do when a child’s behavior gets aggressive and we are completely dysregulated. But we are still in loco parentis. We are the responsible adults. We are standing in the place of a parent or caregiver, and that means our response matters. It doesn’t mean we ignore unsafe behavior. It doesn’t mean there are no boundaries, accountability, or consequences.

It means we respond in ways that protect safety without stripping a child of dignity.

Even in the hardest moments, the goal should not be to power over a child. The goal should be to keep everyone safe, help the child regain regulation, and later teach the skills they didn’t have access to in that moment. There should never be an excuse to even get to the point of labeling a child as “socially maladjusted.” Maybe the environments, expectations, responses, and labels we’ve built around children are the things that need adjusting.