Dr. Sarah (00:02):

Ever wonder what psychologists moms talk about when we get together, whether we’re consulting one another about a challenging case or one of our own kids, or just leaning on each other when parenting feels hard, because trust me, even when we do this for a living, it’s still hard. Joining me each week in these special Thursday shows are two of my closest friends, both moms, both psychologists, they’re the people I call when I need a sounding board. These are our unfiltered answers to your parenting questions. We’re letting you in on the conversations the three of us usually have behind closed doors. This is Securely Attached: Beyond the Sessions.

(00:41):

Hello. Welcome back to the Securely Attached podcast. This is our Beyond the Sessions segment where we answer your listener questions. And I have Dr. Rebecca Hershberg with me today. Hi.

Dr. Rebecca (00:55):

Hello. Hello.

Dr. Sarah (00:58):

I have a question for you. You ready?

Dr. Rebecca (01:01):

I am ready.

Dr. Sarah (01:02):

Okay. So this parent writes in, I’m struggling with how to help my three-year-old regulate during high energy moments. As a child, I remember feeling like something would take over even when I knew I should stop a behavior. I, I think this experience is relevant because now during play or excitement, I see my son become overwhelmed in a similar way. I try to keep my energy at a steady level, and when I succeed, everything goes smoothly. But during inevitable moments of my own dysregulation, like when I playfully act like a silly monster or start singing or dancing with my husband, or when I lose my cool and yell, my son often loses it. If I yell, we’re usually able to co-regulate afterward. But for the happy, playful moments, he often yells at me to stop or get so amped up, especially during chasing games that he can’t seem to come back down. The problem is I don’t know how to regulate myself from that high energy excited state either. So I don’t know how to help him regulate. My husband thinks we should just keep playing and not let our son control our behavior, but that doesn’t sit right with me. How should I respond when he gets overwhelmed by happiness or excitement? Also, I sometimes feel shame like I’m terrible because we can’t just be silly splash in a pool or dance without things getting out of hand. Why can’t we just play other families?

Dr. Rebecca (02:21):

Aww.

Dr. Sarah (02:21):

I know I want to give this parents such a big hug.

Dr. Rebecca (02:24):

I know and splash in the pool. I know it’s so hard. It’s really hard. It’s so hard. And the first thing that occurred to me was in the beginning of the question when she was remembering herself as a three-year-old, what a gift, what an incredible gift to remember that feeling of I really want to act in a certain way and I can’t. And to be able to empathize with your kid on that deeper level. I think a lot of people get that cognitively, but this mom can clearly really tune into it emotionally. I mean, I found that a really touch the whole thing is a really touching question. And I guess the other thing that struck me, and we can just work this through as we talk about it, is I don’t know that I feel as though there was a moment in the question where mom was talking about how she referred to her own playfulness and dancing with her husband and acting like a silly monster as her dysregulation.

(03:31):

But I don’t know that I would call those dysregulation. I feel like that pathologizes it. I almost feel like the question is more when I start to have fun or when I start to just get a little silly and crazy and fun, it’s really hard for my kid. And so how do I not curb that part of myself, but also attuned to my kid and what my kids’ needs are? I don’t want to frame that. I get that kids often feel really dysregulated when they’re excited, but I didn’t get the sense that this mom was dysregulated in those moments.

Dr. Sarah (04:09):

I think I wonder if we reframe dysregulation and regulation and put in this context in terms of arousal or an arousal scale instead of a regulation scale. It sounds like what she’s describing is high arousal in interactions, right? High intensity, high stimulation, high movement, high tone of loud, loud energy. It’s highly stimulating and it’s high arousal for her and for her child, which I think is what might be overwhelming the child in these moments. And I can so understand when she was saying, I feel like shame and maybe grief, possibly that when I get up high in positive moments, my child can’t join me because it’s so overwhelming for them. So then how do we join in joyful and playfulness if we’re in a mismatch in that moment, that can be so upsetting and sad because it’s like I’m not trying to yell at you. I get, if I was yelling at you why you would be upset by that. But if I’m trying to share joy with you and you’re upset by that, that feels like how do we come together in those good moments? And one, I just want to remind this parent, there’s ways to come together in a lower arousal state that’s still positive and joyful and playful. And it might be that this is a pretty young kid. They’re three, so their tolerance for that level of stimulation might grow over time, but in this moment it still might be too stimulating. And so I just don’t want them to feel like, we’ll never have this. It’s like you might be able to build up to that too. Your child must have a really sensitive nervous system and it’s not, it’s overstimulating.

Dr. Rebecca (06:17):

Yeah, and I think it’s funny, it’s like the buildup as potentially being over days or weeks or months, but also the buildup in the moment I picture, it’s like not only is it high arousal, but it’s going from low arousal to high arousal really quickly. It’s like, I almost get this. It’s like I can picture I’ve been when my kids were that young, or even still, you’re sitting with them calmly doing something and you suddenly look at them and they’re just so freaking cute and you’re like, I’m going to eat you up. And they do. It’s like, and it’s like you realize you came on too strong.

(06:53):

And so I do wonder if it’s not that the child can’t play silly monster or can’t tolerate parents dancing, but what if they just transition to that a little slower? I’m going to get, Ooh, I think this mom is sort of saying she can’t necessarily do this, which is also okay, none of us are perfect, but ooh, I really like this song. I think I’m starting the groove. Anybody feel this with me? And then you sort of build up to dance party as opposed to, oh, I love the song, come dance with me. And the kid starts crying because it’s just too much too fast.

Dr. Sarah (07:28):

And as a neurodivergent adults, I can very much relate to this. I didn’t even realize I was screaming at the top of my lungs and how much I love this song while my child is like, whoa, too much. But I feel like, yeah, some of it is that self-awareness and it’s that building that ability to notice your own regulation shifts. I, I don’t, I totally hear your point about separating the word dysregulation has kind of been put it its own category of a negative thing, but I’m talking about it much more like a descriptive, you might be needing to tap into and track your own regulation or arousal levels so that you can be aware when you are going from a four to an eight really quickly. And it sounds like your son is able to show you when that transition is too fast and abrupt and overstimulating for him, which hard to receive.

(08:44):

But also great that your son is able to show that to you because if he wasn’t and was just getting overstimulated, but you guys weren’t connecting the dots as to why that would be a much more challenging situation to solve for, at least you can, it seems like this mom gets why the kid’s getting upset. It’s not like a, I don’t get why it’s happening. It’s like, no, I know why it’s happening. I just can’t help it. And I’m sad that we can’t share these moments together. Or even this other piece, this other layer of is it a problem that I’m supposed to solve? Are we doing something wrong? Is it over accommodating to stop dancing? You know what I mean? Are we teaching him something that we don’t want to teach him if we say, oh, this is too much for you. Let me bring the volume down. Let me take it down a couple notches. And I disagree. I am sure that the husband has really good, I am sure there’s a lot of nuance to what the husband is suggesting, that they should just keep playing and not let their son control their behavior. And it’s not wrong either. But if this is really about overstimulation overwhelming his nervous system, I would try to be more in sync with him, especially at three years old. I just don’t think he can adapt that fast If we’re talking about a 10-year-old.

Dr. Rebecca (10:14):

Well, I think behavior is communication and he’s saying, I really don’t like this. Something about this is making me really uncomfortable. And of course there are times that you kind of push through on that because we do want to build our kids’ tolerance for distress and for frustration, whatever. But this doesn’t sound like that. This sounds qualitatively different. There really is this jolt to their nervous system. And I wonder, I come back to what we’ve talked about on a bunch of episodes about just the power of naming something, of just saying, especially because this mom doesn’t seem to be able to anticipate it, which again, does not make her a horrible parent at all, but just to say, oh, honey, oh, right. That was one of those moments. I did that thing again. I got so excited that I went so fast and so loud, and you need me to come down a little bit and slow down.

(11:11):

And in that maybe I’m going to chase you really quietly. I’m going to be a quiet monster or I’m going to dance with dad really slow. You can modulate. It’s not, I hear this dad’s concern of, we also talk on this podcast about how you don’t want a child to think a feeling is dangerous. So if your child is getting upset, you don’t have to say like, oh, we’ll stop. We’ll stop. We’ll stop. Okay, okay. Okay, fine. We’ll come sit next to you on the couch. You can name what’s happening, and then just sort of, as you said, take it down a notch or two and go slower. And you can still then achieve what I imagine this mom is really longing for, which is this real family in sync feeling and family bonding where it’s even more so because you’re all attuning to each other. And that’s beautiful.

Dr. Sarah (12:00):

Yeah. Yeah. She says, why can’t we just be silly slash in a pool or dance? And it’s like, oh man, it’s not all or nothing. It’s not one or the other. Maybe not at the 10 because it’s overwhelming for him in this moment, but I loved your point of if I name it and then I acknowledge it and I tune back into you and I bring it back down, and then perhaps I invite you to stay in this dance with me or stay in this chay monster game with me so that I can show you too, like, oh, it’s not the game or the dancing that you don’t like. It was the intensity of it. And we can still stay in this moment together and it actually can feel good there. You get that benefit of the stretch. There’s the distress tolerance stretching that you were sort of very helpfully pointing out is the counter to this. We do need that. We don’t want to just shut it down. And so that feels like a really good place to start with this. And then it also helps with that feeling of shame or grief because it’s like, no, you can play other families and you can be joyful and silly and goofy, and you can build up to higher levels of intensity too, probably to together. But if you start at a big mismatch that’s too overwhelming.

Dr. Rebecca (13:34):

Right. And you as mom, if the mismatch immediately leaves you to go into a shame cycle, the idea of naming it can help you too. It’s like, oh, I did the thing. Oh, that thing I always do, I talk too loud. Or like you said, like, oh, I didn’t notice. I was screaming. I can’t believe I still do that. Oh, come on. It’s like you bring a playfulness to it as opposed, and that’s working on your own shame response, which is the work of being a human being. But I’m picturing being a parent with a baby or a toddler or a preschooler in a pool, and I don’t know a lot of young kids that if you just went in and started having a total water fight, wouldn’t start crying. They’re outmatched. First of all, you’re like this, but I picture, and obviously our listeners are listening and they can’t see me, but you know how you start with a really little splash?

(14:31):

You show a little kid, look, if I do this with my hand under the water, it splashes a little bit and then they do it, and then you do it again, and the splashes get a little bigger, and then usually they experiment. They’re like slam their hand in and they watch it slash you and you make some big silly face, and then you can start slow and get bigger in a really attuned way. It reminds me of Jack Schoff and serve and Return, like the metaphor for when we have babies and even if they don’t have language yet and they make a funny noise and we make a funny noise, and it’s like the tennis analogy of serving and returning, and I think we want to stick with tennis. It’s like if you get up and dance or you’re suddenly a silly monster, you’re acing the ball at your kid who’s like, whoa, where did that come from? Building up, build up, go slow, stretch, stretch together, tune back in. I think there’s real potential for beauty and play and connection here.

Dr. Sarah (15:30):

And I keep coming back to this, but this idea that we don’t have to write this off because it’s not working in this particular way. It would be such a travesty for this parent after having these repeated interactions with her son to say, oh, we just can’t be silly. We just can’t play monster games, or we just can’t dance around in the kitchen. That’s just not it for our family. Like, oh, that would break my heart because I just want her to expand her repertoire of what that could look like and to start more. This is really not a question of can we do these things? It’s really a question of how do we practice this slow tuning attunement and sinking up with and moving together and stretching how big we can get together, and then anything is available.

Dr. Rebecca (16:36):

I know. I love it. I mean, I’m like, go play. Go sing, go splash. There’s such beauty in it.

Dr. Sarah (16:44):

I know. I mean, I will say though, it is genuinely hard, and I think this, and again, we’re talking about the playfulness, which we of course want to encourage, but there’s the other piece that she does bring up, which is when she loses it, right? When it’s not a, not a positive feeling moment, but a negative feeling moment, but it’s still about arousal and overstimulation and surprise and a shock to the system, and that’s when she will co-regulate and repair. And so I think that co-regulation and repair piece can exist in the positive, not just the negative, but it truly is hard when your temperament or your style of emoting is not matched up with your child’s. It’s hard. I just want to name that, cause it’s not…

Dr. Rebecca (17:39):

Yeah, and no, it’s not. And you just said something that queued me to think about something that may be helpful for this mom, which is I think the reason why it may be easier for her to do the repair and get back into co-regulation with the yelling is because the child’s response is congruent to the meaning of the situation, so she understands it more. It’s like, oh, I yelled at you. Of course you don’t like that you’re crying, but if you think of the child’s response as being, again, as you said about the arousal and not about the meaning, so that it really is just about intensity, then you can use the same set of tools for the repair, right? You’re not apologizing, right? So it may be different kind of repair. You’re not saying, I’m sorry I yelled, I lost my temper. But it’s that same idea of, oh, I spoke loudly or I danced too quickly, or my moves were too sudden and that upset you, and now let’s calm down and co-regulate together. And so it’s the same if you’re accessing those tools in a moment when you yelled, we know you have those tools available to you.

Dr. Sarah (18:42):

Yeah. Yeah, I think that’s such a good point. I love that. Yeah, so go play. We love this and I hope this helps. Thank you so much, Rebecca.

Dr. Rebecca (18:57):

Yeah, of course. This was such a fun one.

Dr. Sarah (19:01):

I Know. I really liked this one. I’m going to hold onto this. Alright, bye.

Dr. Rebecca (19:08):

Bye.

Dr. Sarah (19:08):

Thank you so much for listening. As you can hear, parenting is not one size fits all. It’s nuanced and it’s complicated. So I really hope that this series where we’re answering your questions really helps you to cut through some of the noise and find out what works best for you and your unique child. If you have a burning parenting question, something you’re struggling to navigate or a topic you really want us to shed light on or share research about, we want to know, go to drsarahbren.com/question to send in anything that you want, Rebecca, Emily, and me to answer in Securely Attached: Beyond the Sessions. That’s drsarahbren.com/question. And check back for a brand new securely attached next Tuesday. And until then, don’t be a stranger.