048 – Co-Regulation and Co-Dysregulation – With Penny Williams

Anouk:
Welcome to the podcast. Today, we are diving deep into coregulation and codisregulation. Don't worry if that's not, like, words that you know. We'll we'll address that too. And it's something that we talk a lot Godbout, we hint a lot about in a lot of episodes. So I'm really glad to to have Penny over on the podcast to talk with us about that. Let's get into it. 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.

Anouk:
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 other 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. Are you tired of feeling overwhelmed and uncertain when it comes to parenting your emotionally intense child? Do you often find yourself playing with guilt, fearing that you're not doing enough to help them navigate their intense emotion? You are not alone. Many parents face these challenges and struggle to find the right path forward. But take a deep Briere, there's hope. That's why I created the Parenting the Intensity community. Imagine having a clear roadmap tailored specifically to your child's unique needs and your family's reality.

Anouk:
Picture feeling empowered and confident in your parenting knowing that you are providing the support and understanding your child needs. It may seem like an untenable dream right now, but I'm here to tell you that it is within reach. Come join us for our monthly group support to connect with other parents and get supported with your challenge right now. You also get 1 on 1 chat and audio office hours for the things that you're really not ready to share in the group, and workshop tools, courses to help you in the process of finding that balance of parenting in a way that works for you, your child, and your family. Hi, Penny. Welcome to the podcast. Glad to have you here.

Penny:
Thank you for having me. I'm really excited to chat with you.

Anouk:
Yeah. I always love chatting with you. So I would like you to start by introducing yourself and telling us a bit more about why you do what you do.

Penny:
Yeah. I'm Penny Williams, and I have the website parenting ADHD and autism dot com and the Beautifully Complex podcast. And I basically coach parents of neurodivergent kids and have online trainings and that sort of thing as well, for that population. Because when my own kid was diagnosed back in 2008, many years ago now, there really was no help for parents like me. There was nothing to say. Here's what you need to know. Here's what you need to change about your approach. And and I it took me a really long time to learn it on my own.

Penny:
Mhmm. And I just hated the idea that I did all this research. I did all this work, and everybody else was gonna have to do the same thing. It made no sense to me. So I started sharing it and, ended up growing a business. And this is what I do full time now. And, you know, my kid has sort of shown me the way, right, and

Anouk:
Mhmm.

Penny:
And changed my path in life, but definitely for the better.

Anouk:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then it's I feel it's still hard to find that now, but, like, 20 years ago, it must have been just impossible because now there's more and more, but still it's hard to find. So Yeah. It's the it's it's definitely a struggle.

Penny:
That's a tough journey. It's a tough journey. And and I think that a lot of the material out there sometimes really sugarcoats it. And, you know, you read books and they say, well, if you just do this reward chart or this token system, or, you know, if you're just more structured. And it's just so much more complex

Anouk:
Yes.

Penny:
And complicated than that. And many of those things are not gonna work, especially if you're not doing the foundational work, if you're not, you know, changing your approach. Yeah. That stuff just isn't gonna work for you. And so, yeah, there's just a plethora of information that you need to know if you're raising kids who have ADHD or autism or anxiety, learning disabilities, that sort of thing.

Anouk:
Mhmm. Yeah. For sure. And, we wanted to talk today about regulation, in a very specific way. And, like, regulation self care is, I think, something that comes up in almost every podcast episode I do with guests, like people. We will talk about that at some point. And I touched briefly recently on coagulation and then scalability, but just as like an introduction. So I'm really glad that we can dive a bit more into those those topics because I think it's a big, big part of what makes it more doable and just like you were saying, reframing the way we parent.

Anouk:
So first, I would love to get your definition of regulation because it's not necessarily that easy to understand, and I love that listeners can have different definition of it. So how would you define it?

Penny:
Yeah. I get really excited when we talk about behavior now because the science is really helping us understand the human experience, really, and the role that our body is playing in the ways in which we respond to things. And so if you're regulated, I describe it as feeling sort of settled. You don't necessarily have to be calm to be regulated. Your energy needs to match the situation. So sometimes you do need to have more energy, but you still feel safe and settled. I'm kind of at peace. Right? If we're dysregulated, then we feel really out of sorts.

Penny:
Our body doesn't feel quite settled. We are having a hard time maybe with our emotions. We're having a hard time with just being okay with what's happening, right, or the environment that we're in. Mhmm. And so that piece of regulation is helping us move from dysregulated to regulated. Right?

Anouk:
Mhmm.

Penny:
If we're regulating, we are moving from sort of the state in our nervous system of reactivity to feeling more safe and settled. Mhmm. And I think, you know, when we use those terms, it's a lot easier to understand. I think all of us at some point have felt out of sorts. Right? Just out of whack. Yeah. I have anxiety, so I feel that way often all my life. I get triggered, but I didn't know, you know, that my body was actually doing that.

Penny:
My body was sending out this signal that said, hey. You know, alarm, alarm, alarm. There's some perceived danger. When you have anxiety, it's often a false alarm. Right? It's too sensitive. It triggers too often. And I think that's true too for a lot of neurodivergent individuals, especially kids who don't yet have self awareness and self regulation. They're getting triggered, and they don't know why or what to do with that.

Penny:
Mhmm. And so that's when we see a lot of challenging behavior sometimes. You know? If my nervous system is triggered in that activated zone, then I need to move or I need to protect myself. Right? That's that fight or flight zone.

Anouk:
Yeah.

Penny:
Yeah. And, you know, now we're learning that we can take that information and have it inform the ways in which we help kids when they are dysregulated. If I'm getting signals that my kid is in that, say, that yellow activated fight or flight zone, I know that their body is telling them they need to move. Yeah. Right? And I need to remind them maybe. Let's get up and go for a walk. What if you went outside and jumped on the trampoline? Right? So we're able now to take all of the stuff that we're learning from the science and use it in our parenting. Right? Use it in our human experience because it's true for us as well, the adults.

Penny:
You know? We're humans. So We're neurotypicals. Right? Like, we all have the same nervous system. It's just more sensitive for some people than others. Mhmm. And some of us know what to do with that information and that trigger from our bodies, and a lot of us don't because we haven't been talking about this for very long.

Anouk:
No. And sometimes we've been taught and trained to not listen to our bodies signal a lot. So it's hard to learn. It's kind of de learning or relearning to listen to our body's trigger and our body's sign of this is how I feel when I'm dysregulated or when I start to feel dysregulated, and we're not used to that.

Penny:
Yeah. If you think about a kid in the classroom, we're telling them to sit still, sit still, sit still. Right?

Anouk:
That is

Penny:
the expectation all day long in almost every class. Right? Yeah. And if you think about a kid who is getting triggered and their body is in fight or flight, they need to move. And so we're asking them to sit still, and their body is telling them they need to move. If we don't allow them to get that movement, what happens? They get more and more dysregulated. They get more and more stressed, and they get less and less able to learn, actually, physiologically. Mhmm. Less and less able to learn.

Penny:
So we're actually by instituting these sort of traditional rules of what learning looks like, we're actually keeping kids from learning.

Anouk:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. And I think, like, it's starting slowly in some classrooms. They are starting to incorporate some more sensory friendly and movement friendly things. Like, I know in my, my kids' elementary school, they add some balls, like gym balls, and they add some, like, heavy animals, like, you can put on your legs and things like that. It was tiring to be implemented, but it was also a school with some class for kids with special needs.

Anouk:
So I think it was coming from there mostly. So general school, it's very, very common way too slowly, I would say, that adaptation. And it's not even when it's coming, it's not coming at the level that lots of kid needs.

Penny:
Yeah. Yeah. And so what's happening is we're co escalating instead of co regulating with kids. Right? When we're asking them to do things without taking into account the signals that their body is giving them, what they need, where they are in that moment, then we're actually making it worse. We're escalating that situation when, really, we're trying to control it. Right? To me, control is a dirty word. I don't like it, because we know better now. We know that we're not trying to create many versions of ourselves.

Penny:
Right? We're we're raising individuals. We're educating individuals, but our systems are still

Anouk:
Yeah.

Penny:
Trying to to work totally on control. Yeah. And that's where we get into trouble. That's where we are escalating, those those struggles for our kids instead of helping them to feel okay and safe and settled.

Anouk:
Yeah. And, like, that's example from school, and how would it show up at at home, for example? How as parents, are we co escalating?

Penny:
Oh, yeah. So so many times. And and here's the thing. I wanna start by saying that our intention is always good.

Anouk:
Yeah.

Penny:
As parents, our intention is good. And sometimes we get triggered, right, by our kids' behavior, and we instinctually and reactively respond before we're able to sort of get control of ourselves. Yeah. It's gonna happen. It's a mistake. You repair with your kid. You move on. But we need to really make the assumption that our kids would do well if they could.

Anouk:
Mhmm.

Penny:
So if they're yelling at us, if they're saying ugly things, if they're throwing things and breaking things, it's a signal that they are dysregulated

Anouk:
and

Penny:
that they need our help. And so when we are reactive or when we try to control their behavior, we escalate the situation. So if my kid is upset and he's screaming at me, you know, I hate you. I can't believe you're doing this to me, and I am yelling back.

Anouk:
Mhmm.

Penny:
I'm escalating that situation big time. Right? Because he's already overwhelmed with emotion that he cannot manage clearly. Mhmm. And I'm piling on to that. Yeah. And, you know, a big for me as a parent was when I understood that when we get super emotional, when we feel unsafe, our emotional brain and our survival brain take over and physiologically cut off access to the thinking brain.

Anouk:
Mhmm.

Penny:
So I I often refer to myself as the great rationalizer. Very type a. I wanna fix everything right, and I wanna take care of things right away. We don't wait. Mhmm. And so every time my kid would get dysregulated, every time he was going into meltdown, I just wanted to talk him out of it. Like, I wanted to talk him through it. Right? Yeah.

Penny:
I wanted to help him to get through that emotional thing, but what I was doing was adding language he couldn't process, adding expectations he couldn't process, he couldn't do anything with. So I was actually building that overwhelm Yeah. And making it worse.

Anouk:
Adding to the stress. Yeah. Adding to the stress that he that he was was feeling in the moment.

Penny:
Instead of helping. Yeah. And I love that you brought up stress too because as he got older, he would say to me, you're putting too much pressure on me.

Anouk:
You know?

Penny:
And I would just ask him to do something. He'd be like, nope. Too much pressure. I'm like, man. You know? You need to do things. Like, you need to get things done. Right? And I had to learn that what he was saying to me was he needed more time to get really settled, get his thinking brain online and working, and then he could take care of things. Right? And so, like, a lot of times we would come home from school, and I'd be like, okay.

Penny:
What do you got for homework? How was your day? Blah blah blah. Right? Because I'm a let's take care of what we gotta take care of and get through it. Yeah. And he needed zero pressure for a while, 0 talking so that he could get regulated after all the stress of school.

Anouk:
Yeah. Yeah.

Penny:
And I just had to learn how to interpret nothingness Mhmm. So that I can get back to a place where things are doable for me. Mhmm. And I just had to learn how to interpret that. But I I escalated for a long, long time. I didn't know any better. Right? If we Yes. We can only do what we know to do.

Anouk:
For sure. And I I love that what you said that it's it's interpretation because it's not clear most of the time. Like, he was not coming, like, as a 8 year old telling you, you know what, mom? I need to just rest and have nobody talking to me and no expectation on me for at least an hour when I come back from school because it was a very stressful day. And after that, I will be able to do what you're asking me to do. Like, no 7 year old ever will tell you that. No. It's always coming up as behavior, and that's when the behavior is triggering us because we think that we're really fast. And as you were talking about anxiety, like we will go very fast in the downward spiral of if he's acting that way now, he's gonna do that in his entire life and will he will never be functioning at all.

Anouk:
And and and we don't do it on like, consciously, but that's still what we're doing.

Penny:
Mhmm. We do it out of fear. Right? We future cast out of fear. And I remember, oh my gosh, Everything went berserk when my kid went to kindergarten. Like, everything was just bad, and I kept thinking about all these things that he wasn't able to do yet. Oh my gosh. He's gonna be walking across the stage to graduate from high school, and, you know, he's still gonna be, like, bumping into walls or, you know, all these sensory things he was doing, or he still won't be able to read yet. Or Mhmm.

Penny:
You know? It's natural because we fear for our kids because we want the best for them.

Anouk:
Mhmm.

Penny:
And we really do have to be mindful and not go there because none of that stuff was true when he graduated. Actually had a drive through graduation because it was COVID. So he didn't even walk across the stage,

Anouk:
but, like, you know We never know what will happen. Right?

Penny:
Exactly. It goes to show that we have no idea what 10 years from now is gonna look like.

Anouk:
Yes.

Penny:
And we have a lot of fears for it. But if we're spending on our all our energy on those fears, then we're not spending energy on things that could actually help shape that future to look better. Right? Look more like what we want it to be for our kids. And, you know, you you're bringing up a good point here about Intense. And I learned to really step back and ask myself, is my kid intentionally trying to hurt me now with what he's saying? Is he intentionally trying to hurt me now with the behavior that he has? The answer always, for me at least, with the kid I have, was no.

Anouk:
It

Penny:
was never his intention. Mhmm. And I think that it's a good measure for parents and for educators to figure out where a kid is really coming from. If we can look at that intention and see that, yes, they're trying to do harm or no, they're not. Because most often, they're not. And, you know, it comes back to what Ross Greene says. Kids do well if they can. Right? And that was the first big shift for me.

Penny:
It was reading the explosive child.

Anouk:
I

Penny:
was like, oh my gosh. If I'm assuming that my kid is doing the best that he can in those moments

Anouk:
Mhmm.

Penny:
Then, technically, I'm not taking it so personally. Yeah. Yeah. Having a hard time. Right? Yeah. He's not trying to make my life miserable. He's actually struggling. I think that's a really good measure.

Penny:
You know? He I knew that he was a super kind kid. So if my super kind kid is now screaming awful things at me, is that really him?

Anouk:
No. Yeah. No. It's not them. It's it's no. Yeah. It's their disregulated state. It's not where they are at their best.

Anouk:
And I someone and I cannot remember who recently said, like, when you have a 4 year old talking about, like, potty related world, like, using those words all the time, we kind of we said that we're not using those word, but we don't make a big deal out of it because it's just normal. But when kids grow older, when they start to use names and say bad words, we often react much more. But it's kind of like, teenager equivalent of those words are words that can be very, like, hurtful and that are square words. And, like, I'm not gonna give example right now, but, like, it's it can be hurtful, but we tend to react much more. But in general, it's the same level of language. They're doing it with the same intent of just expressing themselves, and we are giving it a lot of importance in the same way we give a lot of importance on little kids using potty Briere related words, they will just keep going in.

Penny:
Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I'm not saying that we're excusing the behavior. Right? No. You know, it's not okay for your kid to say awful things to you, but this is where they are at that moment. These are the skills that they have and the control that they have over their own regulation at that moment. So I always teach parents and teachers put yet on the end. So my kid can't express to me how angry he is with me in a healthier way yet.

Penny:
Right? My kid can't tie his shoes yet. I remember freaking out when my kid was 6 years old and couldn't tie his shoes yet. And I thought, oh my gosh. You know? He's gonna be, like, again, wearing Velcro closure shoes when he graduates from high school. He'll never tie his shoes. Right? Of course, he learned to tie his shoes. He just didn't do it in the same timeline that we expect maybe from neurotypical kids. Right? So I think when we're talking about neurodivergence, we just have to be open to sliding that timeline, and the word yet helps us do that.

Penny:
It helps us get in that really helpful mindset of pushing the timeline.

Anouk:
And and it helps with the future projecting. Like, if you come back to that yeah. I think it's really helpful also to say, like, it's just now. It's not in 10 years. It's right now. We're and and I the the shoe tying, for example, that you were referencing. There is so much many option now that you can have, like, elastic laces on your shoes. Nobody will notice that you don't know how to tie your shoes.

Anouk:
So or like any sort of sort of closer. I have a child. It took 10 years to tie shoes, but we bought shoes that had cool closer system that were easier to manage. And it it it nobody noticed and nobody cared and it was working well. And, like, they would have been able to tie shoes, but then they would be late all the times because it was taking time. And I think that's also, like, we will be freaking out if we can find a solution that are out of the box, and it's just right now solution. It doesn't have to be forever. And I think that's a big word.

Penny:
Question though too that I would ask a parent in that situation is, so what if they never tie their shoes their whole life? Yep. Because there are options. Options. Right? Yes. We do have all these elastic lace options now, which were starting to come out about a year before my kid figured out how to tie shoes. So I was like, oh, thank goodness. Like, it isn't the end of the world now. You can wear because they get big enough.

Penny:
It's really hard to find shoes that has closures without laces. Really? So we're really bumping up against that issue. But there are so many things that we worry about that we find normal, and I'm using air quotes with normal.

Anouk:
Mhmm.

Penny:
And then we worry that it's gonna be a forever thing. Some of it is so what? It's a so what? So what if that person never ever ties their shoes? If they had something like cerebral palsy

Anouk:
They would never be able to.

Penny:
Couldn't do it. Mhmm. Nobody would judge. Right? Mhmm. Mhmm. So why does it matter if you have ADHD and you never tie your shoes?

Anouk:
Yeah. Nobody really cares. It's not gonna keep you from having a great life. And I think when we are future planning, we are escalating ourselves.

Penny:
Yes. Totally. We are we are disregulating ourselves with that thinking. Yeah. And that, you know, brings up another good point. A lot of parenting kids who are complex requires flexibility in our thinking.

Anouk:
Mhmm.

Penny:
We need to change our thinking. We need to have radical acceptance of what is and what the timeline is for our kids and what might be different in their lives. Because when we get okay with those things, we're not freaking out about them. We're not freaking out about their future. Mhmm. There's so much more room for joy. There's so much more room for, you know, being in the right mindset to be helpful instead of escalating, to be that calm anchor and that co regulator. If we're freaking out all the time, if we don't have acceptance, then we're fighting against everything all the time, and we're taking up all of the space with that.

Penny:
All of it. And so we can't we can't make progress. We can't have moments of joy and peace, or we can't notice them when we do have them. Right?

Anouk:
Mhmm.

Penny:
Because we're so immersed ourselves in that dysregulated space.

Anouk:
Yeah. And when we are doing that, we are then not able to support our kids and we are escalating with them much more than we are co relating with them. So yeah. Yep. I think that sums it well. And before we, before we hand, I wanted to, ask if you add any resource. You talked about Ross Green. We had a few people talk about that.

Anouk:
If you have any resource that you would like to, share with the audience, something that you use yourself with for yourself or for clients, that could be helpful.

Penny:
Yeah. So many things, and and we certainly have our own courses and stuff. But, something that I think is really, really helpful in the space of talking about regulation is Kelly Mahler's interoception curriculum. You know, interoception is that sense of our body signals. So if my stomach is growling, I'm noticing it, and I'm interpreting it as saying I'm hungry. And that really, really helps with regulation and self regulation. Right? And so I think that's a good, a good resource for your listeners if they want to get even deeper into regulation because we don't like, I didn't know about interoception probably until 10 years after my kid was diagnosed. I'd never heard the word.

Anouk:
Not that talked about. Like, it still is something that is not talked about that much today.

Penny:
No. We're getting better.

Anouk:
Yeah.

Penny:
But it's super important. And kids who are on the spectrum often struggle with noticing their body signals, or they work really hard not to focus on them. Like, my own son who is now 21, he would not do a body scan. It freaked him out. He probably still wouldn't do it, but he's getting better. Mhmm. But he could not think about the breath in his lungs. He couldn't think about the beating of his heart.

Penny:
It totally freaked him out. So, you know, building those, connections in their minds in ways that work for them can be more difficult. And so Kelly's curriculum is really great at working with all kinds of kids and all kinds of, you know, stages of that. Mhmm. And and I would highly recommend that for anyone who's listening to do more of a deep dive in that area.

Anouk:
Yeah. And it doesn't it's just not just for autistic kids. It can be for anybody. Like, everybody, as as the reception needs, and can struggle with that at to some different levels. So, yeah, that's a very

Penny:
good resource. I mean, I as a person with anxiety who gets a lot of body signals, I have been acutely aware of what my body is telling me for a really long time, but only because, like, it was screaming so loud at me. Yeah. Right? That I couldn't ignore it. Mhmm. And I could easily make that connection. Oh, you know, my skin is tingling. I must be panicking right now.

Penny:
Right? Like and so, you know, it is for everybody. Kelly is just really good at adapting that for neurodivergent people.

Anouk:
Right. Thank you. So if people want to know more about you, get, support from you, of course, they can go to the podcast, Beautifully Complex. And what else? Like, where can they find you?

Penny:
Yeah. Parenting ADHD and autism dot com is the easiest. Everything is linked up there. Right. Our behavior program, lots of other resources, free resources like the podcast, other courses, summits. Like, there's so many things that Mhmm. I I get my hands into, but it's all linked up there.

Anouk:
Great. Perfect. We'll link, everything in the in the show notes so people can find it easily.

Penny:
Thank you.

Anouk:
Thank you very much for being here today. That is very appreciated.

Penny:
Always a pleasure.

Anouk:
I am 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 the episodes at Soon as Day 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.