Mindful Moments Blog
Mindful Moments Blog
SPD is a neurological condition that affects how an individual processes and responds to sensory information from the environment. Sensory inputs encompass various experiences, including touch, taste, smell, sight, sound, and movement. SPD can significantly affect a child’s social and emotional development. Early childhood educators play a pivotal role in recognizing, understanding, and supporting children with SPD.
Mindful Moments Blog
4 Ways To Get Your Child To Calm Down
During a meltdown moment, these 4 tips are your survival guide.
What if I told you that the key to fewer meltdowns in your home was not to suppress them but to let them happen?
Any parent could probably tell ya that big emotions and challenging behaviors are daily (sometimes hourly, or, if you’re like our home, minute-by-minute) occurrences. So it makes good sense that we have some tools to know what to do when our children fall apart.
Why Children Struggle To Calm Down
Emotions are pretty new and alarming to our children who are still pretty new to this being alive thing. They struggle to control impulses, even when they know that certain behaviors are not desirable. They lack the foresight to see ahead to consequences and also the memory capacity to remember a “lesson” you taught five minutes ago.
As such, drowning in our frustration and overwhelm, we often work to make it all make sense. Because even more stressful than a flailing child is that feeling we get when we are at a loss as to why our children are behaving the way they are. We look to close the gap and fill in the missing puzzle pieces. We create narratives that our children are defiant, manipulative, and dramatic.
But what if our children were inherently good? If we came in with that mindsight then we’d begin to see that who our children are and what they do are two different things.
Our children are just being children. They are doing their job … making mistakes, learning about themselves and the world, and feeling their feelings. This isn’t a plot to “get us” like the Boogie Man but rather their road to development.
4 Ways To Get Your Child To Calm Down
Now that we know the role of our children, what’s ours? Well, we come in with our sage wisdom, being a guide by the side that they can trust, both in their moments of regulation but also during dysregulation… especially during dysregulation. So, next time your child is exploding like an emotional volcano, give these four tips a go.
SnuggleBuddies® Help Big Emotions & Meltdowns
1. Move to a smaller space.
It doesn’t feel good to feel out of control, especially in front of a crowd. Help your child transition from a large room to a smaller one, from a room with an audience to a quieter space. In removing extra stimulation and influences, your child’s nervous system can shift more quickly.
It may sound something like this: “I see this feels hard. I am going to help you to your room where we can sit together. You are safe and I love you.”
2. Validate and empathize with your child.
This is one of our biggest roles as parents. Validating our child’s experiences meets one of the most vital needs for connection, which ultimately leads to regulation. Our children want to know that their feelings, thoughts, and intuition matter, and to take it one step further, they want to know that their experience is real. They want to know that when they are struggling, they won’t be left alone with their overwhelm, which would feel pretty scary (and thus further a meltdown). Sometimes just feeling seen, heard, and understood is the balm our children desire.
This may sound like: “Something doesn’t feel good inside of your body. I believe you, and I am here.”
3. Respect your child’s boundaries.
Many times, we are so consumed with what we think we should do or the right script or on giving our children what we didn't receive when we were young that we move further out of our relationship with our kids. Despite our best intentions, we are attempting to control the situation or outcome and control is the contrast to connection. Either way, we can end up inadvertently railroading our child’s boundaries. If your child desires closeness, offer it. If your child is asking for space, honor it.
This may sound like: “You are telling me to go away. I hear you. I will sit outside your closed door. I trust your body to know when it is ready. I am here any way you need me.”
4. Wait it out.
Whether you’re right next to your child or on the other side of the door, give your child the emotional space to feel what they are feeling to the full extent that they are feeling it. This means we aren’t fixing it or rushing them along to the next pleasant emotion. This means that we manage our own discomfort so that we can hold space for theirs. In order to fully process the limbic (emotional) tension in their bodies, they must be allowed to express it. Sometimes that takes two minutes, sometimes ten. Keep holding space without the agenda of gettin’ on to the next thing.
As you begin to notice your child shift into a more regulated state, you may choose to touch on the pain point and finish the processing right then by taking a Time-In to discuss what happened, how they felt, and tools for next time, or maybe your child feels ready to move on.
Remember, when it comes to your child, you are the expert. Trust your own intuition to guide you in each meltdown moment. Ask yourself, What do I need right now? What does my child need right now? Use your context clues to give you the answers, because the answers live within you.
Mindful Moments Blog
7 Ways to Stop Disrespectful Behavior
Disrespectful behavior is a normal response for an underdeveloped, reactive brain. Our response to this normal behavior, however, will determine whether a negative cycle ensues or our relationship is strengthened. When you must choose between showing power or showing love, choose love.
Mindful Moments Blog
Two Words That Soothe A Child’s Heart
Our connection matters. Our children feel it. They need it. They need to know that, no matter what transpired today, no matter what was said, no matter what was spilled or knocked over or broken or uttered, we are good.
Mindful Moments Blog
How To Rediscover Emotions That Were Suppressed In Childhood
Sometimes all that we need is a safe place to feel, except we don’t know how to feel a full spectrum of emotions because we were taught not to, and even if we did feel, we lack the language to communicate those feelings. Here's how to change the narrative not only for our mental health but our kids' too.
Mindful Moments Blog
Meltdowns Develop Your Child's Brain When Met With Connection; Punishment Doesn't Work
Toddlers are one of the most authentic creatures on the planet, and also, arguably, the most misunderstood. On the surface, we see meltdowns, defiance, and limit testing. But there’s so much more than what meets the eye.
Mindful Moments Blog
When Your Child Says "I Hate You!"
When your child says “I hate you!” you might find yourself getting defensive or you may feel the urge to assert control over the situation. The key to getting to the root of the challenge is to look beyond the hurtful words to figure out what’s going on for them emotionally. What are they really saying?
Mindful Moments Blog
Your Child's Misbehavior Is A Distress Call. How You Answer Matters.
Misbehavior is really a way of saying “I need help” when the words will not come. We wouldn’t answer “I need help” with “you’re in big trouble.” We’d say, “I can help. Here I am.” Answer the distress call. This is where true change begins.
Mindful Moments Blog
Toddlerhood is a precious time. We do our kids and ourselves a great injustice by assigning negative intent to their developmentally normal behaviors. Instead of going to war, let’s spend these quickly-passing years seeking to understand our little ones and rewrite the narrative on common myths.
Mindful Moments Blog
I’ve Never Grounded My Teenager - Here’s Why
In our culture, we are accustomed to training children through pain. We are fooled into thinking it’s good because it works, but it only works for a short time, and the reason it works is heartbreaking. Here's what to do instead of punishment.
Mindful Moments Blog
20 Parenting Phrases to Use in a Pinch
These tried and true phrases will help you respond to your child in a way that keeps the peace, shows empathy, holds boundaries and brings calm to the situation. Test out a few and use the ones that feel right when you need to.
Mindful Moments Blog
3 Powerful Ways Parents Can Break The Cycle Of Emotional Wounding
Want to react to your children less with yelling, lecturing, and punitive measures - to parent differently than you were parented? This is how we break the cycle.
Mindful Moments Blog
De-escalation Strategies For Jingled Out Kids
December is a sensory-overload kind of month. It’s loud. It’s busy. It’s flashy. For a lot of kids, it can be so overwhelming that they may just jingle all the way to a meltdown. For this reason, it’s good to have a few de-escalation strategies in mind. Here are 5.
Mindful Moments Blog
What Can I Do When I Feel Triggered By My Kids?
Why do we feel triggered when our kids do that thing they do, and what tools do we have to keep us from meeting their immaturity with our own? Here are 3 preventive tips and 4 tools for in the heat of the moment.
Mindful Moments Blog
Santa's 'Naughty List' Has Been Canceled This Holiday Season
The holiday season is meant to be a magical time, but often it is used as leverage to control a child’s behavior. We have a real opportunity to rewrite the narrative. Here's how.
Mindful Moments Blog
Holiday Survival Guide For Parents: Managing Your Child's Meltdowns
Here are some reasons why toddlers meltdown more during the holiday season followed by some easy tips to help regulate their environment and their moods.
Mindful Moments Blog
What Do I Do When My Child Won't Stop Hitting?!
Why does my child hit and what can I do to get him to stop?
Mindful Moments Blog
5 Parenting Hacks For Getting Through A Day With Kids
Looking to make it through the day without yelling, power struggles or the dreaded parenting guilt? Stop what you're doing and check out these 5 simple (and effective) parenting hacks!
Mindful Moments Blog
Help! My Child Prefers My Partner, Not Me
What do you do when your child prefers one parent over the other? Here are tools for both the preferred and non-preferred parent. Spoiler alert: This is developmental, temporary and is nothing you are doing wrong.
