I can picture my seventh-grade teacher, let’s call her Mrs. Smith, with her bun wound almost as tightly as she was, wagging her finger at me, and putting on a very stern look.

“Matthew! Stop throwing those beer nuts across the classroom!”

I don’t remember exactly what went through my head when she told me to stop, but I do remember what my response was, and it was the opposite of stopping. As soon as she turned her back, fling, there went another beer nut.

I’m pretty sure Mrs. Smith hated me. Actually, I remember one particular time I was in the principal’s office with Mrs. Smith and my mom, where Mrs. Smith told the principal and my mom I was the worst student she ever had. I took that as a challenge.

My point in relaying this embarrassing detail about my life isn’t to convince you to try beer nuts (but you should, they’re delicious). It is to say Mrs. Smith’s approach didn’t work. Telling me to stop, sending me to the principal’s office, giving me detention—none of those things got me to change my behavior. In reality, it hardened my behavior. I already thought I was a bad kid, so to me, giving me detention was just proof of that fact.

If Mrs. Smith had just asked why I was acting out, what was causing the behavior, she would have learned that my best friend had died earlier in the year and my parents were getting divorced. Had she made more of an effort to get to know me, she would have found that, before entering her class, I was a straight-A student who was always on the honor roll. I just didn’t care anymore.

I can already hear a chorus of rebuke, “As sad as that is, that doesn’t excuse bad behavior,” which isn’t necessarily wrong. But, the punishment and the time spent trying to get me to stop didn’t work to change my behavior. All it did was make me hate school and lean harder into my misbehaviors.

During that time someone suggested that my dad take horses and riding away from me until I could behave. Luckily, he did not do that; he knew that riding was my only escape and my only pleasure during a difficult time. By allowing me to ride, he wasn’t rewarding my bad behavior or excusing it; he was keeping me from becoming even worse and maybe giving up on everything completely.

On reflection, I don’t blame Mrs. Smith. I am sure she was doing her best with a disruptive kid, and my point here isn’t to try to prove that punishment never works. Punishment has its place, but to use it alone as a tool to change behavior doesn’t work. Had Mrs. Smith asked why, had she made an effort to understand what was happening with me, she might have approached me with a bit more empathy or tried something different to curb my bad behaviors, rather than just using punishment.

I am sure that all of us, at least those of us who were “challenging” like me, can think of similar examples in their lives. We remember a time when we were told, “Don’t do that,” and stopped just long enough for the authority figure to turn around, walk away or otherwise not pay attention. At which time most of us probably proceeded to do exactly what we’d just been told to stop doing. I am not passing judgment. Believe me, throughout my life I have relished doing what people told me not to do.

So, if it’s not effective, why do we like to say, “Don’t do that!” so much and try to punish behavior away? We use punishment because it’s easy. Punishment lets us feel like we’re addressing an unwanted behavior without actually having to engage more deeply with the problem. Studies and experience show that punishment often doesn’t have the intended effect of curbing the bad behavior.

So now replace beer-nut-loving, seventh-grade me with a horse. We all know “that one horse” in the barn that we are told, “Watch out for him. He’s a biter.” It’s easier to label that horse a biter and to give them a whack and say, “Stop that!” when they bare their teeth than it is to figure out why they are biting in the first place. What are they trying to tell us through the behavior? Are they in pain? Bored? Searching for connection?

Maybe the whack and, “Stop that!” was necessary in the moment—or maybe not—but either way, the whack isn’t training. It’s not teaching the horse anything other than to be head shy, or that humans are not to be trusted.

A new student once came to me to ask about her horse, who tried to bite her every time she tried to blanket him. She was told the horse just needed to deal with it so she should elbow him each time he went to bite her. Unfortunately, she said the horse was starting to become more aggressive about it, so I asked her to show me. As we approached the horse’s stall the horse seemed alert to our presence but pretty content. Ears forward looking at us like, “Are you bringing food? Do I get to go out?”

When she picked the blanket off the stall door the horse moved to the back of the stall, and when she opened the door the horse turned away. I told her to stop there. I asked her to notice the horse’s behavior. Inadvertently, she had ignored the horse’s quieter protests, going to the back of the stall and turning away, which then led the horse to say, “Hey, I don’t like this!” in a much louder way, biting instead of simply moving away.

So I asked her to wait at the stall entrance until the horse turned back around. It took a couple minutes, but eventually the horse turned around to look at us again. Then I told her to just reach her hand out to invite the horse over to say hi. To this, the horse didn’t move away, but he also didn’t come to say hi either. I told her to take one step inside the stall with her hand still outstretched. At this the horse turned away again. Again, I told her to stop and wait for the horse to turn back around. Again, it took a minute, but the horse eventually turned to face her again. I told her to take one step closer to the horse. She did, and this time the horse didn’t turn away.

I said to take one more step. Again, the horse stayed facing her. One more step, and she was close enough to touch the horse. I asked her to scratch him on the withers a bit then slowly put the blanket over his back, but if the horse gave any sign of discomfort to stop until he relaxed again before slowly proceeding. It turned out that this particular horse was uncomfortable with someone coming at him quickly with something in their hands. It actually had nothing to do with the blanket. It took just a few times of the student slowing down when she entered the horse’s stall for him to get comfortable enough that he stopped trying to bite her.

It could’ve just as easily been the case that an ill-fitting blanket was making the horse uncomfortable, or that he didn’t like being touched and it didn’t matter if that was by a hand or the blanket or a brush. Trying to figure out what was causing the behavior took a little time. It would’ve been much faster just to elbow the horse. Unfortunately, more often than not this approach escalates the behavior like it had in this case.

Instead of reacting and assuming a horse is the worst in the world, like Mrs. Smith did with seventh-grade me, we can ask why. Maybe the horse needs to see a vet, needs a more enriched environment or maybe just needs more (or less) attention. Maybe if we were as quick to be curious as we are to react or judge, we might just start to understand our horses a bit better. In better understanding what’s happening for them, we might be able to take a more effective approach to dealing with unwanted behavior. Maybe using better training techniques or finding better ways to motivate a behavioral change isn’t even the answer. Maybe simply listening is the answer. What I know for sure is that it can’t hurt, and it might be enough to facilitate a change in a positive direction.

Matt Brown is a lifelong horseman and student of the sport of three-day eventing. He is a five-star competitor and has represented the U.S. as a member of Nations Cup teams at Aachen (Germany) and Boekelo (the Netherlands). He was an alternate for both the 2015 Pan American Games (Canada) and the 2016 Rio Olympic Games (Brazil).

He and his wife, Cecily Clark, work side by side developing dressage and eventing horses, as well as helping students achieve their goals. They base their business in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, and spend their winters in Aiken, South Carolina.