Keeping Your Calm and Supporting Your Child through Big Emotions and Transitions

Dr. Caroline Danda, Part 2

If you missed Part 1, please watch it first here:

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Keeping Your Calm and Supporting Your Child through Big Emotions and Transitions
Watch now (39 min) | A copy of the slides can be found here. Transcript partially edited - please forgive the errors from the talk to text automated script [a bit of getting set up chatter, the talk begins about 1 minute in and some of the topics are listed by time below…
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Transcript for Part 2

partially edited - please forgive the errors from the talk to text automated script

It would be amazing, right, but if you can give him the language they can start to hear it and incorporate it and then you want to revalidate and see it from their perspective. Because again, what they're melting down about is not often that bad, relatively speaking. Like it would be fun to stay at the park all day. They're not wrong. I'd like to have ice cream all day too, right? Like a lot of what they want is not horrible. A lot of it's about timing. If you can be playful and be kind of, like, give it give them, their wish and fantasy or kind of things like that so you can kind of be playful. But again, you're validating their perspective, right? So all through this, this is kind of saying, “I get it.” But you just say, “I get it.” First of all, usually it's “I get it, but” and that's invalidating. So you actually can't say “I get it” then create the space and time to call.

So we've talked it we kind of connected with the emotion we've tried to give him the words things like that and we can suggest a pause but the ideas also that suggesting the pause but you have to include the idea that we're going to figure this out right this is where you don't want to say you need to calm down you need to go to your room you should do this instead because those are fighting words right that creates more defensiveness right just think about if you've got a partner or somebody like that and you're upset and your partner says you need to go to your room right does that work very well yeah not in my house either so you might say this sounds like a good time to pause and reset or you might say you're frustrated I'm frustrated let's just take a minute and then we'll figure out a plan or that was unexpected I'm going to take a pause so I have time to figure it out cuz a lot of times if you make it about you they're more likely to follow your lead right I'm going to take a breath right I need a minute and then you know what that's unexpected you're right that was unexpected I need a minute to kind of think about it too then we can figure it out right and not that it's so important that it's not about just calming down but it's about we can figure it out because now all of a sudden you've moved from you need to stop I'm against you to work in this together and we can figure something out any questions about that so that's all content right let's talk about the delivery so here's the deal your kids are going to melt down so let's just expect it but not dread it and my hope is and having some of these tools you actually have a little bit of figuring out some ideas about how to deal with them right and so expect that there's going to be things that they're going to melt down cuz they're still learning right they're still learning and so your job is to take care of yourself first right this is the whole you know if the if you're on the plane and you know you're flying and the oxygen masks come down what are the flight attendants tell you to do why do they have to tell you that yeah your instinct is to actually they have to literally the fight against literally have to tell you to put your mascot or put their mask on first they have almost said it wrong because your instinct is to go help your kid and the same is true when your kids melt up you just really you don't want them to feel bad either right you want them to kind of get out of that emotion and move forward too so your instinct is to kind of focus all your energy on that right so but that doesn't always work right so take the time give yourself permission to take the pause right which is also really good model right and here's the thing they're either going to catch your distress and your anxiety and your frustration or they're going to catch your calm right so you can't say you got a question so some of that goes back to what we were talking about before probably and kind of saying like it seems like you're really frustrated because something's not going your way and you do a little bit of guessing it's bigger than a bread box without asking the questions like I'm guessing that you know like I'm wondering if something you know happened at school you know or I'm wondering if you know like there was something you wanted to eat but that's not what we had tonight right so you can kind of just give a guess without making it a super big question and you might even say like you know what I'll be here whenever we're ready to figure it out we can figure out what that is right you can let me know I'm here to talk so I think you can start it so that process me take a little longer than you want but that's kind of it would be going back to those other steps with Steps with paraphrasing and just kind of making statements about what you think is going on did that solve Michaels do you have any follow if you have any follow-up questions put it in the chat Michael so the other thing is is what I like to do too is so take your breath right and I like to do something which I call the low and slow so if I start to make my voice go a little bit slower I make sure my volume goes a little bit lower cuz I know I tend to have a loud voice so I can get really excited right so you can't say you know what we're just going to take a breath yeah that doesn't work right that doesn't work so but if you notice if you start to talk slower and you start to kind of make it at a lower level than you can actually it actually has a calming effect on yourself too right and then they can catch that from you because then they know like if you have that calmness they know it's not a big deal they know that you can help them you know it and so as a parent though a lot of times our brains are not in the moment they go here they go again I can't believe they're doing again they always do this or if they don't get I can't believe they're doing this they're always going to do this we're going to be late oh my gosh they're going to be like such a handful as a teenager and so you've got all this chatter going because you're emotions right answers up right and when our kids melt down a lot of times so you know what happens to our brains it also goes here right now so your job first is to take care of you right and just know that if your child melting down your kids struggling right we're also going to borrow from the Animal Kingdom cuz they're in that animal brain so if your kid you're going to be at or below eye level right because that's universally non-threatening and if your kids are younger and you're standing over them or if they're sitting down like it doesn't feel as good right and the other thing is to like you might touch some kids will take touch some kids will not you have to you know again figure out what works for your kid but maybe a gentle rub on the shoulder or just taking their hand and saying their name right some of those things can can give that good Juju that again helps them current chance for some of that calm kind of thing so you want to work on that delivery piece too and and sometimes you do have to walk away at this point okay anyway I'll keep talking and then maybe we can pull that up but we will get a copy of all the slide we were talking about the next step is brainstorming problem solving and that's where you teach the flexibility so you kind of say like okay here's the issue here's kind of some ideas and again be careful not to evaluate right away not the immediate no and then you kind of go and work through them as much as you can and sometimes you don't need to do that depending on what the issue is you may not need to actually go through problem solving but they might be and then at the very end then you can set limits and consequences the messages towards yourself or others right because sometimes we get the kids that are mean to themselves I'm stupid you know I can't do anything right things like that and so natural logical consequence and I would say if you focus more on the first four steps you'll need less of the last steps right but taking away that you can do whatever you need to do here you know that I'm using this one so but they can't still can't see the right 

09:00 Okay so anyway so logical consequence may not necessarily be take away right because if they it looks like through the iPad then by all means like that's definitely like you know in effect but you know if they didn't get their shoes on or you know they yelled and they were saying I hate you you're the worst calling people names… too so but what you might do again sometimes we might apologize but you also you were saying something nice for that person or sometimes they have to apologize to other people so you really want to think about like what's teaching and sometimes actually if they make it through the problems True the problem solving part and and they called down they've learned something and that's really what we're trying to do in the first place so they may not need a consequence if they actually successfully navigate and coming to a different solution Falls down and coming to a different solution? and videos and different things for kids so you guys like I was at the very end say like it's not it's like why did it go black I pushed screensaver or I push the screen and now it's black okay okay then 

11:00  so we'll just answer questions. [Not transcribed.]

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