012 - When you've tried everything...

Parenting the Intensity · Sep 19, 2023

Transcript

I've tried everything. Do you find yourself saying that often? It's probably the most common thing I hear from parents of emotionally intense kids, so I wanted to address that specifically today. Welcome to Parenting the Intensity, where we'll talk all about how we can drop the general parenting advice that doesn't work with our emotionally intense kids anyway and let go of the unrealistic expectations society puts on us as parents. Together we'll find solutions and ideas that work for you and your kids. Chances are deep down you know what you need but you need a little encouragement to keep going on harder days and permission to do things differently and help you fully trust that you already are a wonderful parent to your exceptional but challenging kids. If you feel like you've tried everything and nothing works, this is the basis of what I'm doing and I wanted to address that sentence specifically because it's one I've heard again and again and again and that's why I'm saying general parenting advice don't work because that's those that were we've been trying but first what are those advice and because there's not like one parenting than one way to parent there's lots of things out there but what I'm talking about is the most common thing we see is consequences, behavior charts, and even some things in the more positive parenting world, like consequences is part of it.

Basically everything that we've been told you should be doing by everybody around, every book every blog post and that you tried and you tried and you tried some more and then you tweak it a bit and you try it again and then you let go and then someone else comes back and suggest that again and then you give it another try because you maybe you didn't do it right the first four twelve hundred times Those, those are the general parenting advice I'm talking about. The ones that just don't work for you. And everybody is giving those advice, even professional that are supposed to help you. They're giving those advice and they're suggesting things that you've tried but are not working. And are those advice bad per se? No, no, they're not. they work for some kids. At some point I didn't believe it because I personally don't have quote -unquote normal kids. I have none of those. So I don't know, I cannot compare, but I know from talking to other parents that some of those advice work. But they're just not the right one for kids. That's just life. If you try things again and again and it's not working, then it's not you, the problem is not you, the problem is not your kids, the problem are the advice that you've been given. And most likely than not, not only those advice are not working, they're making things worse with our kids. Because our kids are not behaving that way on purpose. And using consequences or behavior charts, suppose that our kids are doing those things on purpose and can choose another behavior, another way to do things. But it's not the case. We've tried enough to know that when our kids act that way, it's because they're feeling bad. They're feeling uncomfortable, like deeply uncomfortable. They are not themselves. They don't control their reaction. And punishing or because let's be honest, most consequence and punishment, it's kind of the same thing most of the time because natural consequences are not always possible. We cannot do that.

Emotionally intense kids are triggered by something. They are overwhelmed. They act impulsively. They're feeling frightened. they're uncomfortable, they're feeling threatened, they are... when we feel that way as adults, we act like we don't act in our best way and like we act badly too. So giving them consequences won't help anything. It's not gonna make those behaviors go away because they don't control the behavior. So that's what's the problem with the general parenting advice is the fact that it's, it takes, like it's, it takes, it thinks that we will change our behavior based on those consequences because we control the behavior, which is not the case with lots of kids, let's be honest, but with emotionally intense kids, it absolutely doesn't and they will be like triggered overwhelmed and act like they will be all those kids much more faster than most kids will in general and have less control on those impulse of acting whatever that means because they're more there's some different reason of course but one of the big part is executive

functioning. And I'm definitely getting someone to explain more in detail what that means. But no matter what happens with our kids, most of emotionally intense kids have trouble with that. And means that they, on some things, including most likely emotional regulation, they're acting younger than their age and so we are expecting them to be able to control things that they just can't control. So does that mean that we do nothing? No. Because our kids, first because our kids are not feeling well so we need to help them feel better in those moments by finding the cause and of the distress finding the triggers again playing detective you might be very like sick of hearing me say that but that's that we need to play detective there's many ways to find them I have a mini course that can help you start the process you can check that in the show notes but the basic is that we need to play detective to find our kids trigger and they'll deal with them I thought more about that in episode 3, you can go listen to it. And we might also want to investigate further in some instance and get a diagnosis that can help us better understand them too. I also have an episode on that. Not sure the number from the top of my head.

I'm going to put that in the show notes so you can reference it, but this is also something that might help us find what to try. If we feel that we've tried everything and in the detective work, finding an underlying cause, if there's one, might be very useful. And so, while like, it's not only that, of course, we will, we need to find the cause, we need to support our kids that are not feeling good. But often, we cannot just let them do anything, because they can harm themselves, they can harm others. So we still need to put some structure and limits around our kids, even if it might look different than with other kids, and we might not have like consequences or things like that. The first thing is that to remember is it's no matter what consequences might happen after, because sometimes there's natural consequences that will happen. in. Talking about the consequences when they are in a total tantrum is just not the way to go. That's just something to just forget about. We might want to get back to it later, but in the moment, it's not useful. It's not going to help.

But in the moment, we just need to keep everyone safe, basically, and we can redirect the behavior. And then, when they're calm, we can talk about natural consequences, and yeah, sometimes real consequences if we think the kids can control the behavior, but it's really not likely that that behavior was controllable by the kid. But we can try and talk with them when they're calm about what happened, what they felt, what triggered them and be able to better support them next time or maybe ask them what they would like next time and things like that. But we need to, yes, keep a structure. So saying what's not appropriate, yeah, that's for sure. We don't accept violence and restraining them from violence, if they are doing it. If that means physically holding them so they don't hurt anybody or themselves, then so be it. As long as nobody's arming and if that means putting them in a room so everyone's safe and having that room be the safest as possible be it. I mean sometimes we need to go to some extreme and I will have someone talk about that on the podcast later too. I know I'm promising all sort of things but I have so many things

in the work but yeah we need to keep the structure and structure can also mean routine and last episode I talked about unconventional parenting and routine doesn't have to be what we think it should be we can definitely adapt routine. So it fits our reality and our kids' reality better. And one very important thing is making sure things are, the kids know that things are coming into routine. And then when we have to switch from one thing to the next, that they can expect it. Because that is often a big trigger for lots of emotionally intense kids, transition. So putting routine and structure around transition, around things that happen every day, so that can be helpful. But it's just like a temporary fix to some extent, like routine can be permanent, but they will always need that structure but what's gonna be very more helpful is finding the root cause of the behavior so just like wanted to address that that if you've tried everything you haven't that's what I wanted to you to pick from that today you haven't tried everything you've tried what's not working and there's other things out there. Will it be magic and an instant solution? No, but there's hope. There's some other things that you can try that are maybe different than what you think, what you've been told, but there is lots of other resources. And I don't have all the answer. That's why I'm going to bring other people to give you different solutions, possible solutions so you can find yours, the one that works for you and your family. That's the goal with the podcast. And the next couple of weeks and months is to bring you different possibility. So I just wanted you to know that there's hope and that you can try other things. And that you can also say no to anything that doesn't work. See you next time. I'm so glad you joined me today and took that time out of your intense life to focus on finding a new way to parent that works for you and your kids. To get the episodes as soon as they drop, make sure to subscribe to the podcast and please leave a rating and review so other parents can find it too. Also check out all the free resources on my website at familymoments .ca so you can take action on what's the most important for you right now. And take a deep breath, keep going. We're all in this together.