When Your Child Is Losing It and You're Losing It Too, Start Here

Have you ever been in one of those parenting moments where your child is completely overwhelmed and you know they need a calm parent, but you're not feeling particularly calm yourself?

Maybe they're crying, yelling, arguing, or melting down over something that seems relatively small to you. And as they're getting more worked up, you can feel yourself getting more worked up too. Suddenly you're trying to help your child regulate while you're struggling to regulate yourself.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately because there's something we intuitively understand when our kids are babies. When a baby is crying, we don't want to panic along with them. We want to pick them up, stay calm, and communicate, “I've got you. We're going to figure this out.” Our calm becomes part of what the baby experiences.

Our kids get older, but that principle doesn't go away. The circumstances change, and the ways we help them change, but they still need us to bring some steadiness into the moment.

I've been teaching parents to think about this as Pause, Mirror, CALM. First, pause yourself. You don't have to become perfectly calm, but you do need enough space to choose your response rather than simply react from your own frustration. Then mirror the calm you're asking your child to work toward. Your child gets to experience what regulation looks like instead of simply being told to “calm down.” And then you can use the CALM approach to help your child navigate what's happening.

That doesn't mean you're never going to lose your patience. You will. I will. We're human. There will be times when we raise our voices or respond in a way we wish we hadn't. That's where repair becomes important too. Being able to come back and say, “I was really frustrated, and I didn't handle that well. I'm sorry. Let's try that again,” is itself a lesson in emotional maturity.

I explored this idea more in this week's YouTube video, including why I don't think this is actually a new parenting skill. We're really taking something we learned when our kids were little and applying it to a new context as they grow.

And I'm curious: what's the hardest part for you when your child's big emotions start triggering your own?

If you've been struggling with this, hit reply and tell me what's been happening. I may use some of your questions to shape what I talk about in future videos.

All my best,
B.J.