3 Tips for Responding Calmly

Lindsay Miller  0:07  
You're listening to The Stress Nanny podcast, and I'm your host, Lindsay Miller. I'm here to help you keep an eye on your family stress levels. In our fast paced lives, the ability to manage stress has never been more important for kids or adults. When it comes to stress, we have two choices, we can decrease stress or increase our resilience to it. Here on the number eight ranked stress podcast, I interview experts and share insights to help you do both. When you tune in each week, you'll bring your stress levels down and your resilience up so that stress doesn't get in the way of you living your best life. I'm so glad you're here. 

Hey there! This is Lindsay, I'm so glad you're here. Some weeks on the podcast, I interview guests. And some weeks I share tips from my own mindfulness practice and my work with families all over the world. So this week, I'm going to be sharing three ways to respond to your child calmly. So when our kids are dysregulated, and we're trying to come in and offer support, sometimes we come in and try to mandate a response and force them to calm or try to give them like a logical reason to settle down. And most of the time, they're not in a place to receive logical B conversation. If they're in overwhelm, they need five to seven minutes to kind of settle. So for us, it becomes a challenge to respond with calm because they're dysregulated. And it's our job to kind of keep things settled. So three ways we can do this, our first practice BFF breath, this is one that my friend and collaborator, Jen Harrison teaches a lot. I'll go into what BFF breath is and how to use it, to remember that it's not about you. We'll go into this a little bit more. And then three, ask questions more than you give mandates. So those are the three tips we're gonna go over. So the first one is BFF breath. Now BFF breath is a good way to tune into your breathing your body, and feel grounded in the present moment. So the B stands for breathe. So you take a deep breath in. And then you exhale. The F stands for find your body. So you just really connect like remember that you're in a body not just in a brain, not just a brain on legs, but that you have a body and just kind of move or just settle into your body with that second breath. And then the F stands for find the ground or find the floor. So sometimes when we're feeling overwhelmed or really emotional, it can be helpful to ground into the earth, whatever surface that we're on. If you're not outside, you can you know ground into the carpet, wherever you are, just notice that you're being held and supported by the Earth. So B is for breathe. The first F is for find your body. The second F is for find the floor. And that's a quick way to kind of get yourself into a space where you can respond intentionally instead of reactively. And it definitely takes time. And I recommend that people practice breathing BFF breath when they're calm so that they can use it when they're stressed out. Jen, who I coach parents and kids in mindfulness in her parenting group, she uses this breath a lot in her coaching calls. And she encourages parents to practice it consistently so that it becomes just really natural and automatic for them. So BFF breath is the first way you can respond calmly, second, realizing that it's not about you. So a lot of times and it's easy to do no judgment, but we can take kids responses and make it personal. We can feel like it's a personal attack or a personal affront to our own well being or they're trying to get on our nerves or they're again trying to create problems. And it's really normal to have those thoughts. And it's important to be able to let them go so that we can respond with more neutrality. Because if we feel like it's a personal attack, then a lot of times we respond from a really reactive place. And our goal when kids are dysregulated is to provide them with a sense of calm, so that they can regulate their own emotions. So if if the child's emotional responses a big wave, were like the sea that kind of absorbs the wave, so it might crash onto the shore. But then it's going to kind of come back and become part of that body of water that's a little bit more calm. Just those rolling swells out in the ocean. So we want to be the rolling swells where while our kids are the waves, we don't want to come at them with more waves or create a storm so that the waves get higher and higher. So if you think about it in any interaction we have with our kids, we can help to de escalate it or we can help to escalate it. In a recent article that I wrote for emotional intelligence magazine. I talked about how emotional regulation and like helping a child to kind of knew To realize, and an argument is actually winning the argument. So if we can help defuse the situation, we're winning. So instead of it being combative and us taking things personally, our goal can be to create a neutral space for communication to happen and emotion to be worked through. And we've we do that we've given our kids a huge gift. And we've also done ourselves quite a service by making the moment feel a little bit more mellow, and allowing ourselves to not get worked up as a result of our child's emotions. And then the last tip is to respond with questions. So there's a window when kids are having a meltdown, where we can kind of reason with them a little bit. When they get into full blown meltdown mode. Again, they're going to need five to seven minutes to come down from that, and there's going to be no reasoning with them. But if they're just starting to get worked up, one thing we can do is start to ask them questions. And when we ask them questions, we just might ask, like, where they feel the emotion in their body. So like, Oh, I'm noticing you're really angry right now? What does that anger feel like? Or it seems like you're angry? Is there anything that set you off this morning, or anything that didn't go right this morning that made this morning extra hard for you? Or it looks like you're feeling really disappointed right now? And I can appreciate that? Is there anything we could do that could help you express your disappointment? Or maybe you could draw a picture? What would the disappointment? What color would you use? If you were going to draw a picture with that disappointment? And again, using developmentally appropriate language, so maybe making it more playful? Or if it's an older child, making it a little bit more like adult in language? Like using words like, hey, it seems like you're disappointed because your friend didn't text you back about getting together tonight? Is there a way we could connect? Or do something fun that would you know, help you feel better about that? Or maybe he just didn't see it yet? Do you think texting another time would be helpful. So you know, using using language that that is appropriate to the age of your child. But I think that when we can ask questions, it helps us move into the space where we're getting curious. And instead of being really reactive, we activate the part of our brain that is curious, and are the curious part of our brain, it kind of shuts down the, we can't be like really afraid and also curious. So it shuts down some of those other reactive responses if we can tune into curiosity. So making it a habit to ask questions, or give kids a chance to explore the emotion before it becomes a full blown meltdown can be really helpful. And it can also help us to get creative about what happened, what caused it if there's a pattern. You know, one thing you might say is, wow, it seems like every time you hang out with Johnny, you're coming home and feeling really angry at the rest of the family. I wonder why that is. Or it seems like, you know, after you get home from this, you feel really joyful. And I'm so grateful for that I love I love seeing you so happy. What do you think, causes that kind of happiness after this activity. And so giving your kids a chance to really just explore and honor what they're feeling in the context of like a safe container in a safe environment, can sometimes help them get curious about the emotion instead of getting more and more riled up. Or if you're reactive, a lot of times the emotion gets a little bit more explosive from them. And curiosity can again defeat. So again, those three things are just a simple way for us to imbue a little bit of calm into a situation that could potentially get more and more reactive. And it takes practice and time to make them work and to get, you know, consistent and implementing them. So it's important that we're not frustrated with ourselves or judging ourselves or down on ourselves. If you know it takes time, or we don't, right off the bat, start practicing these consistently. But if we do practice them over time, what will usually find is that we can help from escalating situations with kids and we can instead give them a curious place to explore what they're feeling and then find functional and skillful ways of dealing with that emotion. I'd love to hear what works for you. Or if there any other ideas that you try in your house that help you respond calmly when there's high emotion. You've just finished an episode of the stress nanny podcast. So hopefully you feel a little more empowered when it comes to dealing with stress. Feel free to take a deep breath and let it out slowly as you go back to your day. I'm so glad you're here. If you're a longtime listener, thank you so much for your support. It really means the world to me. If you're new, I'd love to have you follow the podcast and join me each week. And no matter how long you've been listening, please share this episode with someone who is stressed out. If you enjoyed the show, would you please do me a favor and go to ratethispodcast.com/thestressnanny and leave a review. The link is in the show notes. I'm so grateful for all my listeners. Thank you again for being here. And Until next time!

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