Claire (00:00:00):

A lot of what I’m doing with families is helping them calibrate their expectations in a loving and appropriate way. So rather than like, okay, I’m giving into my child, I’m just letting him do whatever he wants at a stressful day, what it might look like is he’s left everything on the table at school. So for the first hour when he gets home, he can drop his stuff at the front door and we’re just going to do recharging, no expectations, and then we’ll say, okay, now it’s time to go and hang your backpack up. So it’s not like you don’t have to do anything. I don’t have any expectations for you. It’s I’m going to give you time to refuel and then I’m going to increase the expectations when you are more regulated.

Dr. Sarah (00:00:52):

If you’ve ever felt like your child experiences the world a little more intensely than other kids, their meltdowns are bigger, their emotions run higher, and their need for control just feels more intense than the other kids that you’re surrounded by. Then this episode is for you. Today I am joined by Claire Lerner, a licensed clinical social worker with more than three decades of experience in education and direct practice with families and young children in a range of settings. Claire is the author of the upcoming book, Big Reactors: Practical Strategies for Supporting Highly Sensitive Children, which you Can Pre-Order Now. In this episode, Claire shares why the key to Change often lies not in fixing kids, but in shifting their environment, reframing expectations and empowering parents with tools to hold boundaries while staying connected. We talk about what’s really behind all these explosive behaviors and how to tell the difference between a kid who’s thriving and a kid who’s masking. We also talk about why consistency matters more than quick results and the relief that comes when parents stop walking on eggshells and start feeling in control again. So whether your child’s meltdowns have you drained your searching for new ways to bring more calm into your home, or you just want some practical strategies that actually work in real life with sensitive kids. This conversation is packed with compassionate and actionable guidance and a reminder that you are far from alone.

(00:02:26):

Hi, I’m Dr. Sarah Bren, a clinical psychologist and mom of two. In this podcast, I’ve taken all of my clinical experience, current research on brain science and child psychology, and the insights I’ve gained on my own parenting journey and distilled everything down into easy to understand and actionable parenting insights so you can tune out the noise and tune into your own authentic parenting voice with confidence and calm. This is Securely Attached.

(00:02:56):

In today’s episode, we talk a lot about parenting sensitive, highly emotional children. If you’ve got a child like this, you already know that what works for other kids doesn’t always work for yours, and that can be incredibly frustrating and isolating. That is exactly why I created Parenting By Design, my guided program for increasing emotional and behavioral regulation in sensitive kids. In this program, I’ll walk you through how to map out your child’s unique nervous system so you know what’s happening for them before, during, and after their most dysregulated moments.

(00:03:33):

You’ll learn how to customize your parenting strategies to meet your child’s specific needs based on their brain, body and temperament. This isn’t about scripts or hacks, it’s about building a toolbox that actually works for your child, one that leads to more calm, more connection and more confidence for you both. So if you’re listening to parts of this episode and thinking this could be my kid, I hope you’ll check out Parenting By Design. You can find the link in the episode description wherever you’re streaming this podcast, or head to drsarahbren.com/parentingbydesign to learn more and get started. Okay, now let’s get started with this week’s interview.

(00:04:09):

Hello everybody. Welcome back to Securely Attached. We have Claire Lerner here today with us. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Claire (00:04:24):

I’m thrilled to be here. I look forward to the discussion.

Dr. Sarah (00:04:27):

Me too. I am very excited that you’re here because I think you have very, the way that you work with families and with kids and the particular types of family dynamics that you have become really specialized in is very near and dear to my heart as someone who also specializes in that in my practice. But also I have a kiddo that kind of fits this mold. So I relate to what you talk about as a professional, but also as a parent. And so I’m just really glad you’re here.

Claire (00:04:59):

Well, I’m happy to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

Dr. Sarah (00:05:02):

So for people who aren’t familiar with your work, can you just orient us a little bit to what it is that you do and how you specialized in this particular sort of profile of family dynamics?

Claire (00:05:17):

So in short or as short as I can be, which is not my forte, so please interrupt me at any point. So I’m a clinical social worker by training. I’ve been in this field 35 years and done a lot of different things in the early childhood space. And the way I got to where I am today is because I was seeing kids in treatment, young kids, kids, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, parents were vexed by challenging behaviors, typical stuff, their constant meltdowns, poor regulation, wouldn’t eat the foods they were offered, very rigid, not cooperating, the whole range of stuff. And what I realized very quickly was almost always in most cases the most effective intervention was my parent consultation. So I might see a child three times and then have a parent meeting. And in the therapy session the child was delightful. It was me and them, 50 minutes playing, no triggers, no expectations, no tasks, no transitions, nothing that was stressful to them.

(00:06:41):

And then I would get into the meeting with the parent and it would be this barrage of they’re physically aggressive towards us when we don’t give them what they want, when they want it, and they’re really rigid and demanding and they’re very irrational and the sleep routine is two hours and they won’t let us go until we’ve read them 50, the whole thing. And I thought, oh my God, this is all wrong. I am focusing on the wrong thing. And I realized for most of the kids, we weren’t changing the kid. We had to sort of change the situation and help parents understand what makes their children tick and what their children need to thrive. So in most cases, it was really helping the parent shift their mindsets, have a deeper understanding of the root causes of the behaviors to come from a place of empathy and understanding versus anger and frustration and giving them the tools they needed to be the parent they wanted to be for this child.

(00:07:51):

So about 20 years ago, I completely morphed my practice and now I exclusively see parents in consultation. I do get a lot of information about the children, of course, while I don’t see them directly, I get a lot of audio and video from parents where I’m able to see the transactions and exactly how these dynamics unfold and what the parent is trying to do and how the child is reacting and really feel the triggers for the parents, which in a way is much more effective than seeing a child even in their home or in a therapy session because I’m not necessarily seeing in the weeds moments that I get from audio or video. So I do have lots of ways of trying my best to fully understand the child’s development, their temperament, the environmental factors so that I can give parents very meaningful guidance that is reflective and responsive to their reality.

Dr. Sarah (00:09:00):

Which I think is so important. I am very similar in my approach, although it’s interesting in having done many years of parenting exclusively parenting support, I’ve been finding, I don’t know, I’ve just interesting anecdotally I’ve been doing more parent child dyadic work and I’ve been really loving that, but I agree very much with this core. I had the same epiphany. I was like, if I work 45 minutes a week with a kid in a vacuum or a silo, nothing would change. But when I work with the parents and I can give the parents strategies to shift dynamics within the entire family system, not because that they caused the problem, but because they’re part of an attachment system that is a network. And so if we’re trying to support a child inside of a network, we need to be able to strengthen the entire network. And so I feel like working with the family system is so much more impactful for the child. I always describe it like a spider web. A family is a spiderweb. You can’t just pull one thread without the whole thing moving. You can’t isolate a child’s behavioral issues without looking at the entire environment, the dances that people get into and empowering parents to feel like, oh wait, I can shift. It’s so much easier to shift your own behavior than to try to make your child change theirs. And then when I shift, they shift because they’re tuned into me.

Claire (00:10:37):

Yeah, I think that’s phenomenal, and I a hundred percent agree that I think we both have the same sort of theoretical underpinning that it is a family dynamic and a family structure phenomenon because it’s all about transactions. It’s about what each person brings and what they trigger in each other and what those reactions look like. The difference for me is I think the work you’re doing is the gold standard. Honestly, what I found was that in order to see the volume of parents that needed to be seen, that this approach enables me to see hundreds of families a year in consultation. And what I’m doing is I’m sort of using the video and audio to then tune the parent into those dynamics. What I’m not able to do that you’re able to do is coach them in real life.

Dr. Sarah (00:11:45):

But even in real life in my session, to your point in my sessions, we might not see a hot button moment. Whereas I do a lot of work just with parents too for that reason. Also, I can speak a lot more frankly when I’m just sitting with a parent being like, okay, let’s cut the bs. Let’s talk exactly what is happening. You can name it out loud, we can come up with strategy. You can just talk a lot more freely when the child isn’t sitting right there. So it’s like with the kid, it’s much more about working on that attachment relationship, working on repairing that sense of felt safety, working on the parent’s ability to self-regulate and co-regulate all that stuff. It’s great, but that doesn’t work by itself either. I think you really do have to have those parent session where you could be like, okay, what were you feeling when your kid smacked you in the face in the parking lot? And them being able to actually say out loud, I was dying inside. I just wanted to shrink, but I also wanted to smack ’em back. I just, they’re not going to say that in front of their kid. That wouldn’t be appropriate.

Claire (00:12:51):

Exactly.

Dr. Sarah (00:12:52):

Parents need a space also to process how hard it is to be a parent of a kid who’s really demands a lot from a parent to be able to really thrive. Not all kids are not created equal and they don’t come in with the same, we all have the same equipment, but it’s not always working in the same way.

Claire (00:13:17):

So Sarah, that triggers for me a lot. I think of important foundation guiding principles of this work that we’re both doing. So one of them is the foundational mind shift for me, and that is a critical part of everything I’m doing with families is the recognition and acknowledgement that we even if we wanted to, we can’t change children. We actually don’t. They’re human beings and what comes out of their mouths and what they do with their bodies, we do not control whether they agree to get in the car or stay in their room at night or eat the food that you’re offering them or keep their seatbelt buckled or not hurl magnet tiles at you. Those are all things that we cannot make them not do. What we control is the situation which has, because of that dynamic relationship, parents changing their approach ends up changing the children.

(00:14:23):

So that’s I think what both of our work is really predicated on. And when parents move from trying to change their child and understanding the root cause and make very key mind shifts that we could definitely go into, that’s when you start to see parents able to manage their big reactions. First of all, because they’re not so angry and resentful of their kids all the time. Because as you say, these kids, and I should pause for a second, I didn’t answer your question about how I start to focus on these kids. The kids I’m talking about, I now call big reactors just because that’s how they feel to their parents. But they’re known in clinical psychology or developmental psychology as highly sensitive children. And I know you’ve done a lot of shows that go into the science on this, but just an overview is that these are, some people say 25%, 30% of the population are people who of course start out as children who are wired to process their experiences, both emotional, cognitive, sensory at a very deep intense level.

(00:15:56):

The way I’ve come to operationalize the science, because I’m always putting myself in the parent’s shoes, what it feels like to them in that they can relate to is the fact that it’s like they don’t have a filter. It’s like they’re just absorbing things in a way that is so intense that their reactions seem outsized, whether it’s to sensory stuff, noises, sight sounds, foods the way clothing feels, visual sensitivity, not wanting foods close to each other. I just did a consult with a mom who was very vexed by her child, her five-year-old, like saying things to people that were really offensive simply because she notices everything. And she’s saying, why does that woman have squiggly lines on her face or commenting on people’s voices or the way they physically look are all because they are absorbing these experiences and they need a way to process and express them.

(00:17:08):

But what that translates to is kids who have more tantrums, more meltdowns, they get overwhelmed more easily, they become more rigid and controlling because I think on the inside they’re feeling out of control because their systems are not able to process all of the information, data, experiences their, they’re registering and it’s a coping mechanism to try and control the world, to tell people where they can sit and what they can do and how they can play, and they have to be first and they flip out when there’s a surprise or something happens unexpected. So this is really, these are amazing children, creative, loving, empathetic, passionate, incredible human beings, and because of their reactivity, they can be exhausting and maddening and extremely frustrating to their caregivers who come by it honestly. And that is why I’m so committed at this point in my career to devoting all of my time and energy to collaborating and supporting these families.

Dr. Sarah (00:18:31):

I think it’s so valuable. I mean, I think, I’m sure you get this all the time, but when a parent just sits in your office and starts crying because they’re like, I just feel like the worst parent in the world and I could cry right now, it breaks my heart. I’m like, oh my God. So first of all, the fact that you’re here means you’re not, obviously not right. Look how much you care. You are fighting so hard to try to make it work and it’s so hard and it’s like, yeah, it’s not easy. And I think the self-doubt and the shame and the guilt and the fear that these parents feel, it also drains them. It pokes holes in their gas tanks so that even when they’re trying to resource themselves, they’ve got all this stuff that they’ve internalized or that they fear that it kind of keeps them in chronic fight or flail all the time.

(00:19:27):

I’ve listened to you describe some of these scenarios where you give these wonderful examples of in real life what is actually playing out and how you help these families. And every time I hear you describe it, I’m like, oh, they’re walking on eggshells. They’re walking on eggshells. They’re just trying all the time to avoid the next explosion as a self preservative strategy. I cannot take this. I cannot take one more tantrum, so I will, I contort myself into all kinds of weird positions to avoid the meltdown because I’m trying to keep my own self from losing it and just feeling that hopeless feeling again. The problem is it creates more of the problem because what a kid like this needs, and I’m going to let you explain this, you explained it very, very well, but the kids actually seeking some type of predictability and structure, and if we can take that off their plate, they actually relax a little bit and don’t feel that intense grip on controlling everything.

Claire (00:20:39):

Yeah, I mean, Sarah, I think how you describe the experience of parents of these big reactors is exactly what I see every day in the families I work with. And what I’m reminded of consult after consult is it takes a heroic amount of parental self-control to provide what these kids need. And I think we really have to honor that these parents, what is required of them that I will say out loud is very different than what is required of a parent of a dandelion or a child who’s more go with the flow and adaptable by nature. These kids are harder. That is not putting them down or throwing them under. The fact is that what they need from the adults in their world is such a high level of regulation in the face of behaviors that can be maddening because of how irrational they can feel. And also because often it can get very physical that some of these kids, their bodies act before their brains. That’s one of these sort of phrases over these 30 years I’ve come up with to try and help parents look at these behaviors from a different perspective that is empathetic and not harsh or angry because on the face of it, some of these behaviors look so honestly sociopathic to parents.

(00:22:36):

The stuff that comes out of these kids’ mouths, it’s venom, and the parents are thinking we are the nicest, most gentle, sweet people following our Instagram influencers and constantly validating feelings and following their lead and doing all the right things. And yet my child is spitting at me and telling me I’m the worst parent in the world and I shouldn’t be able to be a parent. My most recent consult, the child said to her Mom, you’re going to have to go live in the stinky shed away from all of us because she wouldn’t let her wear some high heeled princess shoes to summer camp. This is so normal and typical. So I spend half my time in consults telling parents other stories of course, without identifying anybody, just so that they see that they’re not alone. So I think we cannot say enough about how much compassion and empathy and support these parents because it’s exhausting and they also face incredible amounts of judgment from people in their worlds. And it’s just like you say, it breaks my heart, they don’t deserve this.

Dr. Sarah (00:23:58):

I know, and something you said that I think is also super important, I get this question a lot is, is there something really wrong with my kid? This feels so sociopathic, this feels so cruel. And I would say I think a hundred percent of the time, maybe 99% of the time, those same families will also share stories of their exact same child that we’re talking about engaging in the most loving deep love, like super caring, super empathetic, super attuned, super sensitive behaviors. So I’m always want to point that out like one, there are sociopathy is something that happens later in life and over long periods of very specific and extreme trauma and the flickering on of empathy and flickering off of empathy that we see in these kids doesn’t fit in that category at all. It’s that when they are dysregulated, they get complete tunnel vision and lava is spraying out of them and they aren’t thinking about what is going to happen when these words land, right? They’re just spewing. I always say it’s lava. Do not dissect lava. Lava is lava. Don’t try to decipher the meaning in it. It’s just lava get out of the way, it’s going to burn, try to clear the path.

(00:25:38):

And then when the kid is calm again, we want to build skills for being able to tolerate talking about it. These kids also live super close to shame. So I find that a lot of the strategies that I think are very, very helpful strategies of debriefing after an explosive episode and trying to talk about what happened, go walk through cause and effect set expectations, collaborative problem solving, all that stuff is really good stuff. But these super sensitive kids, I don’t think they can tolerate that a lot of the times in any proximity to the event, you need to wait a long, long time. That lava has to really cool so that you don’t have just a secondary chain reaction when you bring it up again because these kids don’t like to talk about what did not go so well at the playground or in the kitchen or at school or whatever.

Claire (00:26:40):

So Sarah, you’ve highlighted or referred to so many I think important things, but I’m thinking specifically about your comments about how these kids can react so differently in different situations and how to understand that the fact that they can be the most connected and empathetic while 10 minutes later they’re hurling horrible venom at you, that they’re going to throw you out the window. I tell this story a lot about the little three-year-old who told her mom through the door who was trying to set some limits around bedtime. Literally, this mom is texting me at eight 30 at night saying, here’s what my daughter is saying, mommy, I’m going to throw you in the garbage can. I’m going to light it on fire and tie the lid on top. This is a three and a half year old. These are the most loving parents who never talk about anything like this. And as you say, it’s lava. I love that and I’m going to use it and I’m going to attribute it to you.

Dr. Sarah (00:27:40):

Please do.

Claire (00:27:41):

I love it. And I happen to have watched documentary last night on volcanoes, so it’s love especially resonant for me. So I think that once I was able to say to the mom, I didn’t call it lava, but I said, that’s the downstairs brain talking. Stay the course. She’s outside her room, she’s playing light music. She’s a presence but with the boundary so her daughter can learn to regulate. And 15 minutes later when the mom didn’t react, the daughter said to her mom through the door, can you come in and say goodnight? Her mom walked in and said, I love you. I can’t wait to see you in the morning. And the daughter literally looked at her and said, mommy, first of all, she said, you still can be my mommy. One of the things she had said is, you can’t be my mommy anymore and I’m not going to throw you in the garbage and light it on fire. And they had a hug and she went to sleep and the sleep problems were over. Now I’m the last person on earth who’s going to say, this is the panacea and this is what you should do with your child because that’s why I’m in the weeds with families because every child and family is different and every sleep training looks different because of that. But I share it to make the point you were making, what it looks like in real life is that they don’t mean it, but parents do say, is he a sociopath? And as you say, this is a disease that has nothing to do with what is going on for that child, but that’s what it feels like to the parent in that moment. They are racked with worry. Does this mean my child lacks empathy? Ironically, it’s actually these are the kids who have an abundance of empathy.

Dr. Sarah (00:29:25):

When they’re regulated, when they can connect to those care and because the thing is, and we talk about this a little bit on the podcast, we’ve talked about polyvagal theory a little bit, but basically in a super, super condensed nutshell, the idea with polyvagal theory is that we have different parts to our nervous system that are adapted. They’ve evolved to adapt to different functions. When we are in a state of threat, we go into fight or flight. When we are in a prolonged and protracted state of threat that we can’t escape, we go into a free state, we shut down when we are feeling safe, when we are in homeostasis, when our body feels safe, we are in our parasympathetic arousal. Our parasympathetic nervous system is online, but our parasympathetic nervous system is our, some people call it rest digest. It’s the opposite of fire to flight, but some people also call it safety and connection because this is where we actually are able to really use our relationships to engage our emotional affective care systems to care for and to feel cared by, to build safety and trust to love.

(00:30:50):

Just wanted to jump in real quick to chat with you a bit more about polyvagal theory. Something you just heard Claire and me discussing, if you’re parenting a sensitive or explosive child, you already know how hard it can be to stay calm when their emotions are running high, and that’s because dysregulation is contagious. When your child loses it, your brain interprets that as a threat and your fight or flight response kicks in too. But here’s the good news. The first step for helping your child calm down is 100% in your control. And how often can you say that in parenting, the first step is calming your own nervous system, and that’s exactly what I teach in Be the Calm in your Child Storm, a 90 minute workshop where I break down the basics of polyvagal theory in a super approachable way and share the same therapeutic strategies I use with my patients to help them quiet their fight or flight response. You’ll walk away with practical tools to manage your own triggers, cope in the heat of the moment and model regulation skills your child will use for a lifetime. To get instant access to this workshop, you can click the link in the episode description wherever you’re streaming this podcast, or just go to drsarahbren.com and click the workshops tab. Now back to Securely Attached.

(00:32:13):

All these kids when they are in their parasympathetic systems, they are deeply loving, right? Because they’re in a state of regulation that allows them to be in that, to have access to that mode. That’s the thing. It’s understanding if we help them get into this mode, they’ve got it. It is not missing. These kids are not, I’ve never heard of a family describe a child to me that doesn’t have when they’re in that safety connected state, when they’re not in fight or flight, when they’re not dysregulated, that are not very loving.

Claire (00:32:56):

And it reminds me of a very common phenomenon in the families I see where it feels like total chaos at home and the child is sucking the life out of the family and everything has to be their way, and they flip out the second they don’t get something they want when they want it, and then they go for their preschool or their elementary school meeting. And the teachers are not only saying, not only do we not have that problem here, but your child is the leader and the empathetic leader and they’re the first person when someone is crying or upset to go help them. And they are tuning into other people and they are really good friends and they are always following the rules. And the ones pointing out to us when a rule or something has changed in our system that needs to be addressed, they’re super attuned in the most positive way.

Dr. Sarah (00:34:02):

Yeah.

Claire (00:34:02):

And again, this is one of those moments where some people would say that’s masking, which sort of is another thing we can talk about where there’s some confusion about what is really going on for these kids and what are the appropriate expectations to have for them. So in this case, I will tell you that almost always when I reach out to the teachers, which I often do because I want to talk to everybody in the system and understand what is this piece of the puzzle, in order for us to understand this whole child, we need to make sense of what is getting triggered for them differently in these different environments. So is it masking, which means they’re frozen and they are so worried about doing the wrong thing or not fitting in that they’re like automatons. That’s what masking is .

Dr. Sarah (00:35:01):

Or fawning even.

Claire (00:35:02):

Yeah. It’s something that it is a true thing that happens often with kids with autism where…

Dr. Sarah (00:35:11):

Or ADHD. I think too neurodiversity in general because I feel like I see this too a lot with kids that are not on the autism spectrum, but are just perhaps a little more well-resourced from a regulation standpoint because if they can keep it together at school, they try really hard to do that, but it’s like a lot of work. It’s not natural. Exactly. They’re not truly free in that moment and just they’re kind of hyper regulating themselves.

Claire (00:35:46):

And they’re not in that parasympathetic state that you were describing. They’re coping, but at a cost.

Dr. Sarah (00:35:54):

Right? They’re stressed. It’s a stressed response.

Claire (00:35:58):

And that is what I mean, overarchingly people might call masking and saying it’s detrimental to the child because they’re working so hard to not be their true self, if you will. And it’s stressful to them.

Dr. Sarah (00:36:16):

Which by the way is also why those same kids come home and just fall apart because they over-indexed on regulating all day. They used up all the gas in their tank, there’s absolutely nothing left. And as soon as they get home, they just s spew lava. They’re just looking for the first opportunity to release.

Claire (00:36:40):

And that’s where I think that when parents recognize that this has been a very heavy lift for their child to go and manage what is required of them in school that we then we’re not, I don’t like the word accommodating. I’ve moved away from it because it feels like enabling. I want a lot of what I’m doing with families is helping them calibrate their expectations in a loving and appropriate way. So rather than like, okay, I’m giving into my child, I’m just letting him do whatever he wants at a stressful day, what it might look like is he’s left everything on the table at school. So for the first hour when he gets home, he can drop his stuff at the front door and we’re just going to do refueling. It’s just going to be having a snack cuddling, playing recharging, no expectations.

(00:37:42):

And then we’ll say, okay, now it’s time to go and hang your backpack up. So it’s not like you don’t have to do anything. I don’t have any expectations for you. I’m going to give you time to refuel and then I’m going to increase the expectations when you are more regulated. I would say that is, that’s a really good example of how I’m working in the trenches with families to understand the child’s experience, to say to ourselves, it’s not his fault. He’s not purposefully being oppositional or trying to draw you into a power struggle he’s done, and we need to refuel him to get him back to that regulated state. But I want to contrast that to where we start, or I was starting in this vignette was for a lot of the kids, I see that’s not the case. They thrive at school because it provides an incredible amount of scaffolding and structure and predictability that helps them thrive.

(00:38:53):

And so they are in their parasympathetic neurological state because of the predictability, because they’re providing so much organization moving from one thing to another. They know exactly what to expect, which is very different from home where the boundaries are more porous and their siblings there that they’re jealous and competitive of parents just naturally have a harder time being clear about this is the limit and we’re sticking to it in a way that it’s school. No kids are negotiating with teachers like the snack they’re getting or whether they can be the line leader every day that week or how much time they get on the playground. So from the very beginning of school, they are learning the rules of engagement and they’re adapting because there’s no loophole, there’s no opportunity for negotiation and drawing parents into a power struggle where at home many kids have learned that if they have a big enough meltdown or if they wear their parent down, they might get what they want because they’re strategic, not manipulative, they want what they want. There’s nothing wrong with that. That’s just in the DNA of kids and it’s up to the parent to be consistent, but that’s much harder for parents than it is for teachers. So that’s often one of the foundational differences in why I see kids acting differently at home and at school. But it is important to think through with families. Is it adaptation and really healthy for them in the scenario I just described or is it masking?

Dr. Sarah (00:40:46):

Right.

Claire (00:40:47):

And I’m wondering how to help parents out there listening to this who maybe don’t have the opportunity to meet one-on-one and really go deep into the weeds on what is the true meaning of this behavior because you could line 10 kids up who are behaving in exactly the same way, and the root cause could be 10 very different things.

(00:41:12):

And so I think that if for parents out there who do have concerns, it’s worth it to talk to your child’s healthcare provider and even do one consult with somebody who has professional knowledge. It doesn’t mean you’re going to be in therapy and have to do this every week for a year. I will tell you that with a lot of my families, very quickly within one or two consults, I can gather enough information and see enough vignettes and stories of how the child’s reacted in different ways to help parents at least figure out what the next step is. And often it is that no, they’ll say, well, does he have a DHD? Or do you think he’s on the spectrum and I have enough information to know for right now what he needs is a little bit of a different approach, and let’s see how that changes things because they have tried something, right?

(00:42:18):

They’re like, well, my child, I did do exactly what they said and I gave them two choices or I didn’t have a big reaction and I just gave them a nod when they were melting down, but all they did was redouble. It didn’t happen the way they said it would happen that I just give him a look and he calms down like, no, that didn’t work. So then what we’re doing is we’re refining, okay, what information does that give us? Right? What does that tell us about him? So if I get a video of a parent who’s talking a child to death, which by the way is almost every video and audio I get, it’s like five straight minutes of I know this is so true. You have such big feelings and all the kid is doing is spiraling. So I can immediately see that the parent has a great idea, which is I want to be connected, I want to be validating.

(00:43:12):

I want to let my child know I’m there for them. But in reality, the effect it’s having is completely overwhelming to this child. And in that case, what the child needed was, I know it’s a difficult moment and just stop and just be quiet. So what we’re constantly doing is refining and often once we figure out what the child needs in that moment, which may look different for each kid, then you start to see a lot of change. If I don’t, that’s always the first effort is can we change the system and see if that results in behavior change more regulation? If it does, we know we’re on the right track. If it doesn’t, then I’m often talking to teachers and maybe we’re engaging in OT or an SLP or a speech language therapist to see, especially if there’s social issues, is there sort of not a language issue in terms of vocabulary but a relational issue. So we’re looking at other things and we’re exploring what the next step might be. So I do want to just put out there for parents that you don’t have to immediately go to the $5,000 neuropsych because that is really, for most families, that’s what they hear and they don’t have the money to do that. So I just want to put out there.

Dr. Sarah (00:44:43):

But also I feel like that’s usually not always, but sometimes people are coming in at 8, 9, 10 years old with this stuff for the very first time, but a lot of times people are coming to me like four and five year olds, and I really wouldn’t recommend a neuropsych for that age. There’s very rarely a scenario where it would make any sense to try to do a diagnostic evaluation to that kind of level at this point in development because too much of the things that we’re trying to map are one lower than most of the scales that this tests are normed on. But also it’s the brain is just the brain and nervous system are so early on in development that it’s really hard to say, is this because of a diagnosis or is this because just where they’re at in their development At this point, it’s like we got to keep going down the timeline for a while before we’re going to explore diagnoses.

(00:45:44):

And yes, it’s true. A lot of kids who are highly sensitive do live somewhere on the edges of the bell curve somewhere. They don’t fit neatly in the middle of the bell curve, whatever that means, whether it’s sensory, whether it’s neurological, whether it’s regulation, usually something that’s a little bit off the typical range of development, but it doesn’t always mean it’s clinically significant warranting a diagnosis. And so I so very much agree with you, take a conservative approach, what’s the first least invasive level of intervention? It’s going to be developing strategies for the child’s environment to shift, and then we progress upwards as needed.

Claire (00:46:37):

Yeah, I just lay it out there because it’s sort of become the knee jerk thing. The second the child’s distracted in preschool or has a big reaction or is inflexible and rigid, it is almost like immediately that’s what parents are thinking, oh my God, it’s just in the zeitgeist that that’s what they need to do. And again, I’m not, how could I know? I don’t even know your child out there for people who are listening, but what I can tell you is that there’s so much you can do as we’re saying in changing the environment that first of all, not only can help, but it also helps you refine your understanding. And for example, many years ago I had a mom who was very, very upset. She would go to preschool to pick up her three or 4-year-old and all the other kids were running to their moms and everything was lovely and idyllic.

(00:47:41):

And when she would come, her daughter would completely melt down and hide under the table. And this mom had tried everything. She was bringing special snacks and offering to read her a book and validating her feelings for 20 minutes and waiting for 20, 25 minutes for her to be ready when this mom had other very important things to do. And so I’m not saying this is a one size fits all approach, but what I’m about to tell you is a model that has worked in so many situations and has been game changers for families in this kind of situation when you as a parent have an expectation, I’m picking you up and we’re going to leave so we can do our other things. And the child is having none of it. So my hypothesis after learning a lot about her child was just that she transitions were hard.

(00:48:34):

She was a very intense little girl. She had a hard time adapting to school, and when she did, we were talking about she went in whole hog. And so it was a big lift for her to go from separating from her mom to connecting with school. The same thing happens now when mom shows up even with warnings like your mom’s going to be here in five minutes and all that good stuff. It was distressing to this child to have to make this another emotional shift from leaving school where she had been for six or seven hours. And so she was reacting. She was in downstairs brain mode and she’s just spewing like, why are you here? I don’t want you. This mother is mortified. Could you imagine?

Dr. Sarah (00:49:18):

And then also the poor mom, the rejection she’s feeling. And it goes back to what we were saying earlier, that it’s like it takes a super power of a parent to do this.

Claire (00:49:28):

That’s why it’s such a good story because or vignette because this mom came to me. Absolutely, exactly what you’re saying. First of all, mortified from everybody witnessing this while all the other kids are running into their mom’s or caregiver’s arms and her daughter is like, why are you here? Go away. I don’t want you here. You brought the wrong snack, throwing the snack. I hate that book. Of course, her favorite book, but now she hates the book. I mean, total insanity. This mom is begging her daughter.

(00:50:00):

Please come. 20 minutes of validation. Can I play this game with you? And all it was doing was causing, it was like a big black hole. This child was filling with dysregulation because there was no clear boundary. So literally this is all we did is she said to her daughter in the quiet moment, as you were saying, not in the heat of the moment, in a totally quiet moment, let’s just call her Jessie. She said, Jessie, I totally get it. It’s really, really hard to go from school to home. I totally get it. So she was no longer taking it personally. I helped her see that this is not personal, this is situational. She’s having a hard time. She’s three, I can’t remember. She was three or four, but she was in preschool and she was three or four. And she doesn’t have that control to say, wow, this is a really difficult moment.

(00:50:58):

So I have to take my five deep breaths and greet my mom warmly because it’s really not about her. No, she’s just spewing lava. So this mom said to her, I totally get it. I know it’s really hard. I feel you. And when I pick you up, we can have three minutes to transition. I will bring you a snack that we choose together. I can bring a book, we can read. If those are helpful, great. If not, we’ll just go and you will have two great choices. You can walk into the car on your own if you want to be in control of your body or I’ll be a helper, but I will help us leave. And that is all she did. And of course we don’t have time to go into all the back and forth, but essentially the first day it was like the child was having none of it.

(00:51:45):

She was doing her same thing. Forget the snack, forget the book. And her mom, as calmly as she could, said, I’ll be a helper and forget the two great choices. I don’t want any of these choices. And all the mom did was say, okay, I’ll be a helper. And she got her into the car. Her child continued to tantrum. She didn’t respond to it. She put on some music or a Tony box, some book on tape, audio book. And within minutes when the mom didn’t respond and just stayed a quiet presence and had been the rock she needed her to be within days, this completely ended and their reunions were joyful and much more regulated. So I share this not to say that this is a panacea and this do this and your child will adapt, but I share it because sometimes these behaviors seem so egregious and so outside the bell curve and so outside the norm that the parents start feeling like either there is something really, really wrong with my child or there’s something really, really wrong with me, with me. And in many cases it’s not.

Dr. Sarah (00:53:00):

Yeah, and there’s one thing I’ll point out and I know we have to end soon. I wish we could could talk forever, but I think something really important that you illustrated is that the mom did the thing that you guys coached her into doing and the child did not immediately say, okay, fine. And mom did it anyway, tolerated what was probably a very stressful exit from school, stressful car getting into the car, stressful car ride home. And even for probably a few days, she was able to maintain this approach in spite of what I imagine was not quick, quick adaptability. It takes a lot of repetition for kids to adapt, but they do. I think what happens is parents give up really too early in the process and then that giving up and pivoting to something else just continues to maintain that lack of predictability and that lack of who’s in charge and in charge are you in charge? And so if you got to stick it out for a little bit longer, I think that’s so helpful.

Claire (00:54:11):

Yeah, it’s a mind shift, which is it worked. If you followed through with it, you stayed your child’s rock and you didn’t get into a power struggle over it, you didn’t fuel the flame.

Dr. Sarah (00:54:21):

Right. What’s the it that we’re trying to work here?

Claire (00:54:24):

Exactly. So that’s one. And I say to parents all the time, it’s going to get worse before it gets better because she’s used to a certain interaction and dynamic. When you change the rules of engagement, even when you’ve told her in advance that there’s going to be a different system, these fierce kids will test it to see if the system will hold.

(00:54:50):

So don’t evaluate your strategy based on your child’s reaction. If you got out of the preschool, you didn’t escalate things and you didn’t fuel the flame and you did leave in the reasonable amount of time, that is a win. And the other reason parents say it didn’t work is because they’ll say, well, she didn’t want to read the book or she didn’t. So it just all backfired. Then it didn’t work because the parent had a hard time following through with it. But when parents, not always, but when parents stay the course tolerate the upset say to themselves, I have a great kid having a difficult moment. He needs me to be his rock. This is what gentle parenting looks like right now. And they stay, of course. I find over and over change and very quickly, these kids are quick studies.

Dr. Sarah (00:55:51):

Yeah, they’re sharp.

Claire (00:55:52):

Right?

Dr. Sarah (00:55:52):

They’re paying attention.

Claire (00:55:54):

Exactly.

Dr. Sarah (00:55:55):

Yeah. No, it’s true. I think we have to remember when a parent says it didn’t work, it’s usually because the it is not right. The it is, did you do the thing you said you were going to do? Not did your child do the thing you want them to do. You just have to follow through the It is did you hold the limit? Parents are, we are all really good at setting limits. It’s a lot more difficult to hold the limit, especially in the face of tons of lava being thrown at us because they’re telling us how mad they are that we’re holding the limit. If you held the limit, doesn’t matter how much lava got spewed, it worked.

Claire (00:56:37):

Exactly.

Dr. Sarah (00:56:37):

That’s it.

Claire (00:56:38):

Yeah, exactly. And that just summarizes where we started, which is it’s not about controlling your child. You can’t mind meld with the child and make them not protest or call you names or try to throw things because they don’t like the limit you’re trying to set. What you control is the situation by getting really clear on what’s the expectation, believing that your child can meet that expectation if you provide the right tools and the right boundaries, and are there rock and don’t fuel the flame. Those are kind of the key boxes I’m checking when I’m helping parents develop, what is their tool going to be when their child won’t stay in their room at night, when their child won’t come to the dinner table, when their child won’t get into the car on time for school. So that’s the major mind shift is it’s my job to figure out what my child needs, which is very different from what they want much of the time, and what can I do? What is within my power to scaffold that, to ensure that we leave school on time or that my child gets the sleep they need and so forth.

Dr. Sarah (00:58:02):

Yeah. Thank you so much. Claire. If people want to get in touch with you, learn more about your work, learn more about your books, how can we connect them to you? What’s the best place for them to go?

Claire (00:58:16):

The easiest way is to just go onto my website, which is just Learner Child Development, my blog, I have over 150 blogs where I go in the weeds on all of this stuff. Lots of things we didn’t get more of a chance to talk to about shame and about perfectionism and sore losing and all the things that often happen for these kids that can be very vexing to parents. You can also follow me on Instagram, which is also Learner Child Development and learn about my books. But most importantly, my book Big Reactors is coming out on October 2nd, and it’s just stories in the trenches of how I collaborated with parents to help them solve some of these very difficult situations, not because it’s a one size fits all approach, but to help other parents see the process and the roadmap that they can hopefully then also apply to their unique child and family and if nothing else, to see that you are decidedly in very good company.

Dr. Sarah (00:59:26):

Yes. What a great resource. I’m so glad that you came on and shared all this with us. You have to come back. We have to keep talking.

Claire (00:59:33):

I would love to. Yeah. I feel like I found a soulmate.

Dr. Sarah (00:59:38):

Yeah, we’re kindred spirits. Thank you so much.

Claire (00:59:42):

Okay. You’re welcome.

Dr. Sarah (00:59:50):

If you enjoyed listening to this conversation, I want to hear from you, share your thoughts and your feedback with me by scrolling down to the ratings and review section on your Apple Podcasts app or whatever app you’re listening on. And let me know what you think of this episode or the show in general. Your support means the absolute world to me, and just a simple tap of five stars can make a real impact in how this show gets reached by parents everywhere. So thank you so much for listening and don’t be a stranger.