353. Q&A: How can I teach my child if talking about their behavior just makes them reactive and upset all over again?

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):

Hey everybody, welcome back. We are going to answer listener question and I have Dr. Emily Upshur here to lend her wisdom.

Dr. Emily (00:51):

Hello.

Dr. Sarah (00:51):

Hi. Good to see you. So this listener she wrote in and she says, hi all loving the podcast and hoping you can help clarify something for me. I’ve heard you say that I shouldn’t try to teach in the heat of the moment, so I’ve been waiting until my daughter is calm to talk about what happened. But even when I bring up whatever she did hours later by saying something like, remember when you got mad and hit your sister? My 6-year-old completely loses it all over again. I feel stuck because I know she can’t learn when she’s dysregulated, but anytime I try to talk about it, she gets dysregulated again. So how am I supposed to help her learn? This is such a very legitimate, I feel like this is the experience of a lot of parents and it’s super confounding and frustrating.

Dr. Emily (01:43):

I totally agree. And you could even replace the with if I implement a repercussion or a consequence, they recycle all over again. So it’s the same thing of how do I teach a dysregulated child if they keep getting dysregulated any time.

Dr. Sarah (02:01):

Even after. Like, I’m waiting. I’m not doing it in the heat of the moment. They are calm when I do the intervention, but the intervention itself makes them erupt all over again.

Dr. Emily (02:11):

Yeah, it’s a great, great question and really common. I mean, I think the thing I think about most clinically when I work with parents on this is can we separate out what the skill is they’re not able to do and work on that independent of these situations. So you’re not no longer talking about, in this example, you’re no longer talking about you hit your sister, right?

Dr. Sarah (02:37):

Mhmm.

Dr. Emily (02:37):

Might be talking about we’re really working on you keeping your body safe and to yourself keeping your arms and body safe, and that’s what you’re working on all the time and you’re reinforcing when they’re able to do that. You’re like a detective trying to find out when you’re using a safe body, even if you’re upset or frustrated and you praise a lot for when you’re able to do that and you work on that skill Outside of the relationship dynamics. In this example, it sounds like that’s very evocative for this child. So we want to sort of separate those two things out.

Dr. Sarah (03:11):

Yes. I mean a hundred percent. I totally agree. You just simplified everything I was going to say in a beautiful soundbite. So thank you.

Dr. Emily (03:18):

I live this experience. Me too, with my children all the time.

Dr. Sarah (03:22):

Yes, I have one of those. Well, and I think I know you do too. You have a kid that is very sensitive to shame and I have a kid who’s very sensitive to shame, and I think that is what’s getting, what is getting. I think that is the thing that we are seeing. If you have a kid who is activated into a state of rage because of some sort of territorial dispute with a sibling and in that quick reactive state they move straight to 10 out of 10 and hit their sister, we can make sense of that, right? They got threatened, rage took over and they exploded, and they were aggressive when they calmed down because that rage eventually subsides. And then we go in to say, Ooh, that was really tough. What happened when you were so mad that you hit your sister? What’s happening secondarily is we are in seeing, they’re mad in seeing they’re not so great behavior. Even if we’re not actively admonishing them, we might be coming in very calm and very warm. That light on that moment is in and of itself shame inducing, and it’s the shame that is moving them into this dysregulated state all over again. And so it’s just really tricky with these kids that are so sensitive to shame to have these debrief conversations. It just really is because going back to the bad moment, it closes off their learning brain, their thinking brain, and so it’s like, ugh, every time I try to get in there, I wake up the lava again.

(05:20):

And so that’s just sort of what is happening. How do I as a parent make sense of what is happening so I can feel like I can understand this phenomenon that is frustrating me so much and confusing me, which makes your approach so helpful Because that approach of we are going to work on keeping our body safe and looking for moments to praise when it’s happening and we are going to practice it in moments that are unconnected to the shame inducing debriefing event. I’ll describe this as if you think of a timeline before, during, and after an explosive moment, this mom already gets don’t do the teaching during our job is to maintain safety and not put gasoline on their fire, which is hard enough in the after, that’s when we can often do this debrief where we’re doing, helping them connect the dots, helping them make sense, helping them understand what the expectations are, all that stuff. But kids who are really sensitive to shame don’t really do well with the after interventions because the after just throws them back into the during.

(06:30):

So if you think about this timeline, this linear timeline of before to during to after, and you imagine taking that line and turning it into a circle where you’re in a loop and the before, during, after just turns into the next, before you want to be doing a lot of your interventions in the next, before the next eruption, not the during, not the after, but the before. And it doesn’t have to be related to the specific time you hit your sister. It’s just like you said, it’s looking for the moments that are before the next time this kid gets mad and wants to hit their sister.

Dr. Emily (07:14):

Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. And I think if you think about this a little bit behaviorally, I think to your exact point, you’re looking at sort of the antecedents, what happens before the behaviors and then the consequence. We’re sort of looking at that, but I think if we really look at this, we’re looking at potentially dysregulation as a variable hitting, we could isolate to hitting, and I think it’s really helpful as a parent, we decide to focus on one of those things. So I might in this example just say, I’m going to focus on helping my child reduce their hitting and I’m going to do that before this whole thing was hard. But I think we can sort of ubiquitously do that throughout instead of just attaching that to behavioral disruptions. We’re going to use that as an opportunity to just target that as an intervention all around.

(08:07):

And I think there’s many ways you can do that. But like I said in the beginning, searching for times when they’re able to exhibit restraint and praising that is really important. I’m also okay with creating a little bit of an incentive depending on the age of the child, what can they hold in their mind? But I think if the praise might be enough of an incentive, but creating a target and then saying, Hey, if you can not hit your sister, we flip this around into a system where you can build a skill. You can say you can earn X, Y, and Z, or you can, if a day goes by, remember to keep it really short, the reward from the good behavior because the children are deferred gratification isn’t great for kids, but I think if you give immediate a high five a hug, if kids are a little bit more prone to wanting yours and mine, it’s like don’t look a cat in the eye kind of kid, then you might just give them a nonverbal wink or a look that’s of an improving nature. Or later, a moment later you can say, I really liked how you were able to control your body. So it becomes, again, the behavior comes less interpersonal and it becomes a little bit more of a skill that you’re trying to target.

Dr. Sarah (09:26):

Yes. I love that a lot. I have a question for you typically, and I feel like there are definitely times where we have a kid where we can say we’re going to practice not hitting, but I often find, and I’m curious if you tweak this at all with very impulsive kids or kids who really struggle with regulation, that the hitting is the train already left the station. So asking them to inhibit the hitting is like that’s not always in their control. So I want to go backwards, backwards, backwards a couple steps and try to figure out what is the skill that’s two steps ahead of the hitting. So am I hitting because someone is, so this is a little bit more complex. I think of a process. You first have to kind of track it a little bit and say, what’s the antecedent to the hit? Is it lots of different things all the time and it’s global and it’s diffuse, in which case, and we might just be like we’re, there’s a lot of opportunities to practice inhibiting hitting, and maybe that’s where we start. But if we notice, okay, my kid only is hitting in these situations, they’re only hitting when someone is taking their territory or when they’re feeling like some type of territorial threat, then it’s like maybe the skill to practice don’t hit, but let’s think about how we get you some more territory and then also think about how to be flexible with my territory.

(11:01):

So you can’t ask a kid to be flexible with their territory until they first feel like they have ownership over some truly protected territory. So how I would play this out is let’s say we have a kid who really hits when someone is encroaching on something they’re doing or playing with, I might say, okay, we’re going to have this play date, or your brother and you are going to be playing or your sister and you’re going to be playing before we go into this playing time, are there some things you want to set over here to keep them safe so that nobody else can touch these? So you’re giving them ownership, property, territory, safety. Then you say, okay, now the rest of this stuff, this is going to be played with. If someone wants to turn with this but you’re not finished, what can you do? And give them practice saying, when I’m done, you can have it, or I’m working on that, right? Or no, that’s mine. You can have this. And then to take it another step would be to say if they want to do something, how do you tolerate giving up some of your territory?

Dr. Emily (12:11):

I love that. I mean, I think that’s all super relevant. I think my only sort of revision for the audience here is sometimes that can be really a little abstract like you said. So I think for a parent that’s like, okay, I don’t know how to do that quite yet. If we are saying in that example, my target would be territory. And so I think it’s just, I love that you’re saying, I think you’re completely right. Hitting might be too far down the chain. It might or it might not be because that might not be, it’s hard to tell. Every example is so unique. So I think as my advice to parents is pick a target, pick one thing you’re going to work on that really, I always say parents really, really know their children that you really think is the source. And to your point, Sarah, go down a little deeper and go down a little bit deeper and really think, oh, it’s not about hitting.

(13:07):

It’s actually that they don’t like their toys. Played with hitting is the result of that, but it’s really sharing toys that’s really generating some of this behavior. Let me work. My target is going to be sharing toys. And I think that just helps ground parents and not feel so overwhelmed by all the stuff we always do all the time. But it’s hard as a parent to sort of implement those things in the fly and in the moment. And if you know that you have one thing that you’re really truly focusing on, I think it really helps parents feel more mastery and kids too really, because getting supported on, I always just say, don’t try to work on too many things at the same time. Just pick one thing and really focus on it.

Dr. Sarah (13:48):

And I think just to bring this back to this person’s question, I get the frustration and the overwhelm of feeling like I’m trying to follow the rules and they’re not working. I just want you to remember there’s more than one way in. You can help your kid address this challenge even if you can’t get in the debrief in the after, there’s a lot of moments that can be useful in disrupting this loop that we find ourselves stuck in. So I just think I find that to be very reassuring for parents. If something just doesn’t, if there’s a strategy that feels on paper, it is going to be the obvious thing to try to do and it really doesn’t work for your kid that is totally okay and you’re not stuck, you’re not out of options. This is where that zooming out and kind of saying, okay, one, let me try to understand what is actually causing this cycle to occur. And then where is another entry point? Can I go into the before more? And I think the before is the most underrated space for parenting interventions because for this very reason, it’s like we can use play, we can use connection, we can use motivators and behavioral, the carrot better.

Dr. Emily (15:20):

And I also think we can use in the before a lot better collaborative problem solving, which even a 6-year-old can do. How can we do this a little bit better? That might be way far away from the reconnect that the conversation that this parent is trying to have and might be far enough away to say like you were describing really nicely before this play date. Let’s talk about how to do that’s far. That’s not talking about the bad thing that happened that’s going forward. It’s a little bit more future oriented and collaborative problem solving with children around that gives them more and it feels like they actually have some good ideas sometimes.

Dr. Sarah (15:57):

And typically not always, but typically shame is less activated by the future because shame is usually tied to a thing that has happened. It is a memory and when we talk about the future, we don’t really elicit shame as much.

Dr. Emily (16:17):

That’s right.

Dr. Sarah (16:17):

Some kids can still associate things, but they are making an association that they are then linking back to a memory that elicits shame. But it happens much less when we orient them to the future because it’s fresh.

Dr. Emily (16:32):

Totally.

Dr. Sarah (16:32):

It’s fresh space and it’s a lot safer for kids that are sensitive to shame to play in.

Dr. Emily (16:37):

It’s an opportunity for success. It’s always an opportunity for practice.

Dr. Sarah (16:41):

Yeah. All right. I hope that this helped and I love your questions. I know Emily loves your questions and please keep sending them in and good luck. Good luck out there. It’s rough. All right, see you soon, Emily.

Dr. Emily (16:58):

Bye.

Dr. Sarah (16:58):

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.