Parents often want techniques to get their children to behave. But it’s not techniques or knowing the right words to say that are going to help. It’s the energy they feel from you.

Staying calm and regulated in the face of their dysregulation is your most powerful tool. When a child loses it, he needs your calm to help him calm down. Young children don’t have the ability to regulate themselves emotionally. His brain will mirror your brain.

To me, the most important thing is not about what you do or say to a child who is having a meltdown, but how you maintain your own inner calm. That’s always my main focus. If I can stay calm, there’s a high likelihood I’m going to be able to tune into their emotions and appropriately mirror what they’re feeling. I’ll be able to see past their behavior to the sweet child inside, and recognize that they’re in a moment of struggle right then. Then I can be compassionate instead of frustrated.

A young child isn’t able to moderate their emotions by themselves. They need your help to calm down and get back to themselves. You literally are their external brain, and when you are calm, you not only model how to act for them, but you teach their brain they are safe.

There are times that it’s easy to be calm, and you don’t need to try. But then there are the times when your children are much more challenged, or you’re feeling much more challenged – and the worst: when you’re stressed and they’re stressed at the same time.

This is when you have to be the most careful because your interactions are highly likely to be really negative.

Yesterday morning I had a situation like this. I was feeling very pressured in the morning because I thought I might be going with ds11 on his school van, and in the event that would be allowed, needed to have everyone completely ready before I got on the van at 7:20 am. I had only thought about doing this in the middle of the night, so no advance planning was done.

So I was feeling some time pressure and wanted the younger three children to put on the clothes that I gave them with less than usual assistance from me. They’re all quite capable of that, technically. I gave them each their clothes and told them I’d help them if they needed help, but to please put their clothes on as much as they could while I got their lunch boxes ready.

Despite reminders, ds6 did nothing to get dressed for half an hour.

He did other things, though – he put on his muddy boots over his soiled pajamas, climbed all over the top bunk bed in dd’s room, getting it all muddy in the process. I took him down and reminded him it’s time to put on underwear and pants. I sat him down to anchor him physically (he’s very easily distracted) and gave him his clothing again.

I came back in a few minutes later – he was on top of a different bunk bed (now also muddy), still with muddy boots and soiled clothing, still no progress getting dressed. Thirty minutes had passed by this point from when I had first given him his clothing and asked him to get dressed.

Though the muddy boots on the beds was a first, there was nothing unusual about this scenario. He usually needs a lot of guidance to do something and if he doesn’t have it, he does what feels interesting to him at that moment. But on this day, I had to take a deep breath because I was feeling so annoyed. One of his signs of dysregulation is distraction – he moves faster and faster, getting more and more erratic, seemingly oblivious to what he’s supposed to be doing.

I took off his boots, took off his pants, and put his underwear on him. I didn’t want to physically interact with him at that moment any more than that because of the level of irritation I was feeling.

Do you think me being frustrated was conducive to him moving faster? No. Was my expectation that he get himself dressed realistic? Not in that moment.

When I learned at 7 am that I wouldn’t be allowed to go on the school van because I didn’t have advance authorization, it was as if a balloon of tension emptied out of me. While I attended to getting the kids who needed to go on the van out the door, I let ds6 get dressed in his own time, helping him afterward with the clothing items that were missing when I had restored my inner calm.

Seeing he was unable to follow even minimal direction, I knew he needed more relaxed time and warmth than usual and made the decision to give him a ‘vacation day with Mommy’. He was so happy about that. He loves to stay home with me and it’s been three weeks since his last day home. We had a really nice day and he was so happy and relaxed all day long. This is when I felt like his balloon of tension released from him. (His teacher called me later that morning and mentioned he had a hard time the morning before, and I was especially glad I had kept him home to unwind.)

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Everyone has specific times and situations that trigger them.

My biggest challenge is when I feel time pressured, as I shared above, and this is when I’m most likely to overreact. When you know what your triggers are, you can take steps to avoid them.

Knowing my sensitivity to tension around time, I find a few things helpful. The first is to be proactive and take steps to avoid getting into situations that are hard for you and require a lot of your emotional energy to stay on an even keel. I build margin into situations, leaving more time than I need to to get places on time and to get children ready. I try to think ahead so that in the mornings, I’m not rushing or trying to find things.

For example, today three of the kids need white shirts because it’s Tu B’shvat so a couple of days ago I made sure all of their shirts were washed so when it’s time to get dressed, I’m not looking at empty hangers in the closet and realizing the shirts they need are unwashed and in the hampers. That would be stressful for me and cause me to feel tense. One child is supposed to take a treat for the class party, so that was purchased last night and put into his backpack.

I’ve had a few times that I realized the night before that I didn’t have enough bread for sandwiches and had to go to the store down the block at 5:30 am. Now I buy a few loaves and keep them in the freezer so I don’t run into that situation.

However, life happens, things come up, and I can’t and don’t always preempt to the degree that I’m never in a situation that challenges me.

Then there’s the level of managing thoughts. If I think thoughts like, “Why isn’t he getting ready, what’s the matter with him, what’s wrong with me that I can’t get him to do what he’s supposed to do?!”, I’m going to feel annoyed and even angry. If I think, “I don’t have enough time, I can’t do this, it’s too much”, I’m going to feel tense and stressed.

So I try to replace these kind of thoughts with more calming thoughts like: “I have plenty of time, it’s fine, I’m doing great, everyone is working together with me”. This is really helpful, because it’s our mostly our thinking about a situation that cause us to become dysregulated, more than the situation itself.

When I keep my voice calm, it keeps me – and everyone else – calm. If I’m feeling annoyed, dropping my voice to a lower key and speaking slower helps me feel more calm, whereas if I speak faster and more urgently, I get more upset.

Lastly, shift your external environment to support you. I find music to be a wonderful tool. Often I put on upbeat music in the mornings and get the kids dressed while singing and doing funny dance moves with them. Sometimes I’m thinking about all I need to do that day and starting to feel tense, and I put on relaxing music or affirmations to listen to while I prepare their lunch boxes. (Ideally their lunch boxes would be prepared before waking them up and in warmer weather I do but in the winter I like to stay in bed where it’s cozy for longer. :))

Don’t beat yourself up for not always being calm. I want to be calm and collected no matter what is going on around me, and have to forgive myself for not always being able to do that. However, over time I’ve significantly increased my capacity to stay calm in the face of challenging behavior.

Avivah