45 – Helping kid calm down: Why?

Welcome to the podcast. This one will be a very quick one, but I wanted to address why we want to calm our kids.

Welcome to Parenting the Intensity, where we'll talk all about how we can drop the general parenting advice that doesn't work with our emotionally intense kids anyway, and let go of the unrealistic expectations society puts on us as parents. Together, we'll find solutions and ideas that work for you and your kids. Chances are, deep down, you know what they need. But you need a little encouragement to keep going on harder days, and permission to do things differently, and help you fully trust that you already are a wonderful parent to your exceptional, but challenging, kids.

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So we talked on many episodes and there will be even more on that topic of how to help kids calm down and stay regulated or regulate themselves back. But I wanted to address quickly the fact itself that we want our kids to calm down. At the start, this is coming from an expectation that kids should be calm and behave in a way that society is expecting them to, that is often too high of an expectation for a lot of kids. And with emotionally intense kids, it is definitely too high for most of them. And when we want an answer to that struggle, most of the time we have in our head something the child should do or that we could do for or to the child. But it's most likely not the case.

Most of the time we need to make changes around the child for them to then be able to collaborate, learn, behave, act in a way that is expected of them. We need to remove temptation. We need to move more so they do too. We need to scaffold a structure around them so that they are more able to do things. It can be a scaffolding of different things, including knowledge or skills that they don't have. So yeah, we need to help them learn some skills. We need to lower the expectation on some aspects because they are not ready yet. It's often just temporary. So they can focus on other things or that they can learn skills to be able to do those things eventually. We really need to approach it in adapting things around them, not change the child, but change their environment and that includes expectation and teaching them skills. So as much as all the suggestions to help kids calm down are valid and necessary, especially since we want them to learn to deal with their intense emotion as they grow older. We also need to stay in the now and change things around them so they can live more success now and have the space to learn what they need to get better at it all. And why I emphasize the now? It's because often we will resist in adapting the structure around our child, the environment, lowering expectation, because we're afraid of the future. It's not a now problem, it's a tomorrow's problem and many tomorrows. It's something that we fear will or might happen when they are older. That is why we don't want to lower expectation.

For example, if a child is in need of calmer moments in a like a little tent with lowering the light and some edit phone to lower the sound, oh my god, it will never be able to work. Is that really true? There are so many ways, especially now, to work. And will they still need that all their life? It's possible. It's also possible that things will change, that they might still need it for some, like to some level, but might less. As they grow older, they will have more control on their environment and things will adapt, things will change. And the problem that we have now, the struggle that we see, the limits that we see, they might not be there anymore. So focusing on now, what is happening now, what are their needs now, is hard. Because it's normal for us as parents to look at their future and want the best for their future. But it is by answering their needs now, helping them live, experience and success now, that we will build their self -esteem now, that we will make them feel understood and valid in their experience of the world now, so that they can be better later on. So if you are resisting some of the adaptation of the environment, some of the lure of the the expectation or asking for accommodation even. We have another episode about that. Just focusing on now. Where are the needs now? And trying not to spiral into what if. What if one day? What if tomorrow? What if when they are adults? We don't know. And I know how hard it can be to not know. I wish we can know, but we cannot. And it's not useful to think of it that way. It's playing in our nervous system and dysregulating for us to think that way. But if we can stay in now, we can stay more regulated, more calm, support them better and help them develop more resilience. Yes, they will develop resilience even if they have accommodation and even if we change the environment because they will develop it at a level and at a rhythm that they are able to. It's not by throwing someone in front of a lion that you develop any kind of resilience. This is just fear. This is just acting in a lot of hormones that are not helpful. It is by doing it at a level that we are able to now, that we will be able to grow and develop, support them in growing and developing themselves in a way that will make them be more able to maybe need less of those accommodations later, maybe not, but they will be able to adapt their world much more easily when they're older.

So I really encourage you to focus on why you want your child to calm down in every given moment and question if it's a realistic expectation in that moment or if things can be adapted. I have a boundaries for emotional intense kids course that you can get it's very small price and it's really helpful to think about all of those boundaries or expectations it's kind of similar and question if it's the right thing for your child right now so just think about it next time you have trouble calming your kids down is the thing they are reacting to is necessary it might it definitely might but sometimes it's not or it might just with some accommodation so I hope you find ways to make it a little bit easier see you soon

I'm so glad you joined me today and took that time out of your intense life to focus on finding a new way to parent that works for you and your kids to get episodes as soon as they drop, make sure to subscribe to the podcast and please leave everything in review so other parents can find it too. Also check out all the free resources on my website at familymoments .ca so you can take action on what's the most important for you right now. And take a deep breath, Keep going, we're all in this together.