003 - Helping our kids calm down in the heat of the moment

Parenting the Intensity · Jul 18, 2023

Transcript

What we can do to help kids calm down when they have overboard emotional response. Music 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 they 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.

Music This is a question I got from a parent of the community, and I think it's a very common question. Lots of people were agreeing with that question, so I'll address it. And if you listened or read it or anything that I do, you'll fast learn that I don't have one short and easy answer to that. I'm sorry. About that, there's no one-size-fits-all and no magic solution. Everything needs to be adapted to each child's needs and each family's reality. So I won't go in a one-through-three-step easy way to do that because I don't believe in those. And if you're here, you probably don't either because you tried. You saw that.

It didn't work. So that being said, I also know that is something that we all want the answer to, because it's what's making our life really hard with emotionally intense kids. And there are some answers for sure. And we'll talk a bit about that today, but since there's no one simple answer, there's multiple possibilities. And so that's what I want to explore in the next episodes of the podcast. I don't have all the answer. Like, that's for sure, because there's so many possibilities. And so every guest, like I want to bring guests on that will share their suggestion, and I want to bring you on, parents of emotionally intense kids, so you can share what worked for you or what you tried and really failed with your kids, because it might fail with others. It might be a heads up or it might work for others. So I think that it's like coming together and sharing all of our ideas that we'll find. We can all find solutions that work for our kids, because we often have to think outside the box to do things that are different than what we learn and parenting blogs and what other people around us are sharing. And so we really need to be parenting differently. And sometimes it's hard to find ideas, basically. So sharing others. So yeah, I'm going to address some like the basics today, but it's going to come step by step in future episodes, too. So I would say it all comes down to two main things.

One is a reminder of something you know, I'm sure. But we so easily forget, especially in the midst of it, the fact that they're struggling, that when they're acting out, when they're melting down, they're struggling. They're not trying to do things hard or not. They're not doing that to annoy us. They're not doing that to manipulate us or make our life impossible. They really are doing that because they're struggling. They are having a hard time and they are not able to regulate themselves. They're not able to control what's going on. If they could, they would. They know what the appropriate way to do things, but they're not able to do it in that moment. And they might be able to do it at other moments, but not now. And I know you know that, but it's really important to remember that when we're in the moment because it's so easy to forget when we're triggered by what our kids are doing.

I still forget it sometimes. I've been doing that for 15 years with my own kids. I've been supporting parents in doing it, and I still forget because it's a physical response that we have to some of our kids' trigger, an emotional response or a fear response. It's deregulating us when our kids are like that. So we react. We don't act. And so the difference with practice is that we can more easily switch. We can more easily look at ourselves and seeing that we're reacting that way and that we're being triggered and calm ourselves down. And I have another episode on that subject. And that brings me to another important aspect of it, is that it's very important when our kids are melting down, acting up, say what you want, to not engage in the power struggle because it's very easy to just go up. And like they're yelling, you're yelling, and it gets worse and worse and worse. And that just makes things worse. So the first thing is to not engage. And it's so easy to say and it's like incredibly hard to do. I know that. But it's the basic of it. And so lots of suggestion, example will be based on that, not engaging and being able to calm ourselves. Because I honestly, when I say to you, Jack, don't engage in a power struggle, I don't want to laugh because it's absurd to just say it like that.

We see it all the time. Just take on. Yeah. As if it was that easy. You know, if it was that easy, we would all do it very easily and we will not be here today. But it's still that. But yeah, it's still what? Like the magic ingredient. That's the magic ingredient.

It's just very hard to use. And so the other thing, the other constant is what I call playing detective. And what does that mean? It means we need to find what will prevent our kids outbursts because it's much easier to prevent them than to calm the kids down when they're already disintegrating. But preventing our burst is definitely like the first step to do like. So because, yeah, it's very hard to just calm them down when they're already triggered, but we cannot always do that for sure. It's just lowering the number of outbursts, lowering the triggers, the less they will have those response, those really intense emotional response, the less we the more we will be able to stay calm, basically. Because if they do that like 10 times a day, we just we can't stay calm. We can't regulate ourselves that much. We need to reduce the numbers of times that that happens. And like there's many possible triggers and they can be combined, which makes it very hard to find. But I would say and I'm going to go deeper on that on another episode, I'm pretty sure because it's very important. It often feels random, but it often is not that random. It's really rarely totally random. It just looks random because it's a combination of triggers most of the time. And so since it's a combination and we don't always know the triggers, it looks random. So if we play detective and we find triggers or this one or this one, this one is a trigger for my kid, we can have a better idea and better prevent those. So for some, it's tiredness, for others, it's boredom. Like many kids will be triggered by the feeling of not having our full attention. Think of when we're on the phone call, for example. Some will be triggered by noise, by eat, by hunger, overwhelm, stress, cold, feeling that they're judged. Like it can be many, many things.

And those are just examples. There's there's many other possibilities and you know your kids best and I'm sure you can already think, oh, yeah, my kids can be triggered by this, this or this. But there's probably triggers that you haven't ever realized that is one for your kid. And then learning to first detect those triggers and we cannot like remove them all from our kids life. But knowing that their triggers can help them and us cope with those triggers, because we can find ways to help them cope. We can anticipate all burst before they happen and reduce the chances of them happening. Again, it sounds simple, but it's far from it because I'm sure you tried lots of things and some lots of time it looks really unpredictable. So it's a long time like it takes time. It takes dedication, energy that you might not have right now. And I completely get that. And it's all like it's an ideal that we're looking at. It's not something that you can just get up now and do perfectly. It's never going to happen that way. It's going to take time. And you might not have that time.

You might not have that energy right now. And it's very important that you give yourself that time and energy and that you forgive yourself for not having the time and energy that you would need to do that right now, because it's really impossible to do it all right now. And you'll find triggers again and again, and they will change as your child grow and get older. And some might disappear, some might appear. It will be different. So, so yeah, and of course the other the other way is to help them calm down when there are triggers. And there is some simple things. But again, it will be different for each of your child. Some kids will be able to take deep breath. For some, it's just saying take deep breath, I'll send them in a spy wall. And so it's the same way as when you're playing detective to find the triggers, you need to play detective to find what works for your child, and it might be completely different than for another child. And some things might work for a time and stop working. And so there is no, there's no simple answer. I wish there was, but there is not. 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 left 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. Thank you.