Supporting our children to manage their (very normal) big feelings

 

All children (and all adults!) experience big feelings.  And these big feelings can take on all sorts of different guises.  Sometimes the feelings show up as very loud and noisy tantrums and sometimes they are so quiet that we need to look much more closely not to miss them, like sadness that hangs around for much longer than it should.

The thing about these big feelings is that they are perfectly normal to feel and actually the main reason these feelings end up bursting out in all sorts of tricky behaviours is because our little people don’t know how to manage them yet.  Emotional regulation is not something any of us are born with, it is something that we develop and this is where we come in.  One of the most important jobs as a parent or carer is to support our children to manage these big normal feelings in ways that are healthy and adaptive. 

Understanding the science (Dan Siegel)  

Ok here is where I need you to use your imagination a little bit.  Imagine there is a house in your brain.  Not a very big house just an ordinary little house with an upstairs and a downstairs.  The upstairs part of the house (what psychologists call the Prefrontal Cortex) is the part of the house that is responsible for all of our good decision making.  This is the part of our brain that helps us to plan, organise, think about consequences, consider other people’s perspective and all of those other skills we need to make good decisions.  Unfortunately, this is also the part of the brain that will not be fully developed until our children are in their mid-twenties - essentially by the time it is fully developed it is highly likely that your child will already have left home. 

What this means is that it is hard for our children to make good decisions all the time.  This is because when they experience big emotions like anger or worry, they literally lose access to this thinking part of their brain.  Dan Siegel calls this flipping our lid.  When their lid is flipped, their big feelings are in the driving seat.  With big feeling running the show they have no capacity to think and they will react to whatever is happening around them with no thought about the consequences.

What often happens in these situations is that we try and reason with them, we say things like “it’s OK just calm down”, “why are you so upset it doesn’t matter”.  And while this comes from a place of good intention the reality is that when our children have flipped their lid, they can’t hear what we are saying and don’t have the capacity, in that moment, to make use of the lovely wisdom we are trying to share.  Before they can even begin to make sense of what is happening and think about all those lovely possible solutions, we need to support them to get their lid back on. 

Lending them our own prefrontal cortex  

The one thing we know about our emotions is that they are incredibly contagious.  So, if we come home from work feeling anxious or angry it is highly likely that our small people will also start to feel anxious or angry.  And this works the other way too, I’m sure you have all had the experience of your child feeling very anxious about something and you suddenly start to feel anxious too.  The flip side of this is that our calm can also become their calm, because while anger and frustration are contagious so is calm.  When our child is really struggling to manage their big feeling and things are beginning to feel out of control the single most important thing that we can do in that moment is to make sure that we are feeling regulated ourselves. 

This is hard! How many times have you flipped your own lid and suddenly found yourself just as frustrated as your child; I know I have?  And this is OK we are all human.  We can, however, take steps to reduce (not prevent) the number of ruptures we experience in our relationship with our child.  The key question to ask yourself when your child is overwhelmed by their big feeling is “am I regulated” because what we know for sure is that a dysregulated adult will not be able to regulate a child who is overwhelmed by their big feelings.   

So how can we increase our ability to remain regulated – we do this by investing in our own wellbeing.  I know for many parents, myself included, this can feel counterintuitive and it is often the thing that gets pushed to the bottom of the things to do list.  And this totally makes sense, being a parent is utterly exhausting…. but if we want to parent in a way that is respectful and nurturing, we need to look after ourselves first.

This doesn’t necessarily need to be complicated.  To start with it is about getting the basics right – making sure you are getting enough sleep, you are eating healthily and you have at least some physical movement on a daily basis.  After this it’s about the small moments – reading a good book, having a dance to your favourite song, chatting on the phone with good friend – even 5 minutes of any valued activity will make a difference and contribute to your ability to remain calmER in the face of often very challenging behaviour.   

Once we are regulated it becomes so much easier to hold some of the following ideas in mind.

Connection before correction (Kim Golding)

From the science we know that threatening responses such as shouting disconnect us from our children and this disconnection will always reduce our capacity to influence their behaviour.  The opposite is to privilege connection before we move into correction. This is definitely not about being passive but it’s about the order in which we do things.

When our brain perceives a threat, they go into fight flight mode and the thinking brain shuts down.  When this happens, our children are not able to learn anything.  So, while shouting might be well intentioned and come from a place of wanting to guide our children to better behaviour it doesn’t work.  For our children to make good decisions they need their upstairs brain switched on and shouting will always switch it off.  This is why connecting before correcting is so important because it is only when our children feel connected that they will be open to learning and moving forward. 

You know the scenario, your children are fighting over a toy.  When we go directly to correction it might sound something like this

“That is not kind, give your brother back his toy immediately” 

When we try to connect before we correct it might look something more like this,

“I can tell that you really want to play with that toy and it must be so hard to watch someone else playing with it”

This will allow your child to feel like you see him and get what he is experiencing which is so valuable in terms of getting his lid back on and reducing the hyperarousal he feels in his body.  Once he is calmer you can then move to correction

“Even though is feels hard it is not OK to take the toy so let’s think about how we can work this out so it is fair for everyone” 

Of course, sometimes children will be so dysregulated that they will need more space and time to regulate.  But the more frequently we can connect before we correct, the more capacity they will have to learn the lessons that matter.  

 

For those children who need more time to regulate breathing is a super power  

The reason why breathing is a super power is because when our breathing is strong and stable essentially so are we and actually we know this is often the first thing to go when our little people get overwhelmed by their big feelings.  One of the most powerful ways to get the upstairs brain back online is to support our YP to engage in slow steady breathing. 

What deep measured breathing does is flick a relaxation switch (the parasympathetic nervous system) in our bodies and even if we don’t think it is going to work our bodies literally have no choice but to reduce the neurochemical surge we are experiencing. 

For breathing to be helpful there are a few things we need to hold in mind

–        We need to make sure that they are breathing right into their bellies

–        We need to make sure that they are breathing out for longer than they are breathing in

–        We need to make sure that they practice because otherwise when they are overwhelmed their brain will be too busy managing other things to remember to do it

One really nice way to do this, especially with little kids, is to ask them to take their teddy for a walk.  They choose their favourite teddy and lie on the floor.  They place their teddy on their tummies and as they take a big breath in they can see their teddy rising up and as they let go of all that lovely breath they will see the teddy going down again.

Bringing our child back in to the present moment

As adults we are all too familiar with the fact that our brain are avid travellers. Regularly taking a trip into the future asking excessive “what if” questions – what if nobody talks to me at the party, what if I forget the words of the presentation, and so on.  We also know that our brain can travel in to the past.  Sometimes this is for very lovely reasons, to think about a delicious dinner or the beautiful sky - but often it is to ruminate about things that may have not gone so well.  For our children this is something that develops over time.  Very little children are really good at being in the present moment, they get absorbed in whatever is happening right then and there. As our children get older this begins to change.  With this change comes amazing capacity.  Much more ability to think and plan about the future and consider the past and what we can learn from previous experiences, but with these new skills also come challenges especially when the what if questions about the future start to generate some very tricky feeling that can tumble out in all sorts of tricky behaviour.  

The sooner we can start to encourage our children to develop some skills that allows them to come back to the present moment the greater their capacity to manage tricky stuff will be. 

A super simple way of guiding our small people back in to the present moment is getting them in touch with their senses.  Ask them to think of 5 things they can see, 4 things they can hear, 3 things they can touch, 2 things they can smell and 1 thing they can taste…… similar to breathing it needs practice to be helpful when they are overwhelmed.  This is something that you can practice on the school run or waiting in the queue at Tesco.  It’s also something you can do with any number of things in your immediate environment - how many things blue things can you spot, name everything in this room that is triangular in shape….  It doesn’t matter what it is, what matters is that they can guide their little brains back in to the present moment.   

Being active

What we now know about stress is that it has a beginning, a middle and an end….

Sometimes we have parts of our lives that are naturally stressful – a new job, a redundancy, a poorly parent.  This is also the case for our little people – on a daily basis they are managing lots of big and small stressors – a new nursery, getting used to a new teacher, finding maths difficult, exams.  These are the things that activate the stress response in their body.  The stress response on the other hand is the physiological process that happens in our bodies when our FFF response is activated.  Now we know that this is a really important and natural process which is super helpful if we are being chased by a big dog but not so helpful when it is activated by everyday things that we all experience. 

So, happens to all the stress that our little people encounter through the day.  Essentially it builds up in their little bodies and makes it so much harder to manage those big normal feelings.  

Which brings us to BE ACTIVE.  Emily and Amelia Nagoski have told us that the single most effective way to complete the stress cycle for us and our kids is to literally do anything that moves our bodies.  If we can move for 20 minutes- amazing- but if not any amount of time moving our bodies is helpful.  Some of the things that have worked really well for my family have been chasing each other around the garden, a spontaneous kitchen bop, walking the dog, the egg game on the trampoline - it doesn’t matter what it is it just matters that we do it regularly to prevent that build up of those neuro chemicals in our bodies. Because when we can siphon theses neurochemicals off we all have a little bit more capacity to keep our upstairs brain online.

Lastly,

Maya Angelou has a lovely quote “do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better”.  Our brains are constantly changing in response to what is happening around us so it’s never too late to do things differently.  Our children don’t arrive with a manual and it is really important to remember that there is no magic wand.  Sometimes after you have tried all the things suggested your child will still be struggling and no matter what you do you can’t make things better.  Sometimes all we can say is “I am here for you if you need me” and give them the space to get their own lid back on.  

Sometime you will say things you wish you didn’t and that’s OK. Just remember when this happens (and it will) to repair the relationship as soon as possible.  This will let your child know that they matter more to you than whatever happened.  And actually, it also supports our children to learn that ruptures happen in relationships and that’s OK, those ruptures can be repaired. 

And remember the most important and kind thing you can do as a parent is to look after yourself, you cannot show up for your child if you are not showing up for yourself.