Respond to your children with love in their worst moments, their broken moments, their angry moments, their selfish moments, their frustrated moments, their inconvenient moments because it is in their most unlovable human moments that they most need to feel loved.  ~ L.R. Knost

Right now, as we navigate the pandemic, adults and children alike are experiencing more stress and unpredictability than ever. Inevitably, children will have rough days – days that are likely to be punctuated with difficult behaviours and emotional disregulation. As Knost emphasizes, our role as parents is to love our children when they are having good days and, just as importantly, to love and support them through their rough days too.  So here are six practical parenting strategies that can help you do just that.

To recap, in last week’s article, I described an important mindset shift for parents that provides a key starting point for us to parent our children with empathy and love even during their worst human moments. This mindset shift recognizes that:

• children are unable to control their emotions when they are unable to meet expectations being placed on them and when they are experiencing too much stress;
• according to neuroscience, children don’t develop the ability to self-regulate (or regulate their own emotions) until they are around 14 or 15 years old;
• parents have a key role to play in co-regulating their children’s emotions until they develop the ability to this themselves.

Accepting this mindset shift enables us, as parents, to understand that our children’s disregulated behaviours, like hitting, kicking, swearing or melting down, are neither intentional nor under their control.

So I know what you’re thinking… this all sounds good but how exactly do you do this? Well, here are six practical strategies to help you support your children through their most difficult moments with patience, empathy and love.

1. Regulate your tone of voice and energy level

When your child is having a hard time, regulating the way you speak to your child is an important aspect of supporting your children with empathy and love. If your child is escalated and disregulated, make the effort to deliberately engage with your child using a much lower level of energy than your child is expressing. Speak more gently, use a calming tone, and do your best not to yell and raise your voice. Bringing this lower level of energy helps to balance out the energy level of your child and can help to calm them down more quickly.

2. Create physical proximity to help co-regulate your child

When your child is experiencing disregulation, they may not be able to re-regulate their emotions if they are left alone. Often, a child requires co-regulation to get themselves back to a regulated state. In other words, they need a trusted adult to help them re-regulate their emotions and help them calm back down.

Creating physical proximity may help co-regulate your child. You can try purposefully moving closer to your child to try to connect with them at their level. If you notice that your child is starting to get angry, frustrated, or agitated, try going over to where they are and interacting in a very personal, physically closer way.

You might go and sit beside them and lean in close and look into their eyes; you might scoop them onto your lap, or if it is safe to do so, you might pick them up and carry them around. Moving closer to your child may help them calm down and diffuse the situation before it becomes more difficult for both you and your child.

3. Co-regulate your child through physical contact (where possible and appropriate)

If you’re able to pick your child up safely (i.e. they are not struggling against you so that you might drop them or someone may get hurt) by all means pick them up. This of course depends on your child’s tolerance for and preferences around physical touch. If your child can tolerate physical touch, it’s a proven way to help them deescalate and reduce stress.

In Burnout: The Secret to Solving the Stress Cycle, Emily and Amelia Nagoski indicate that studies show that an at least 20 second hug regulates another person’s nervous system. This means if we can carry our children for that 20 seconds and keep them close to our bodies, it can help deescalate them and co-regulate their nervous system. This is something that really helps for one of my children while my other child prefers not to be touched when upset.   So, depending on your child of course, you can try picking them up at various times while they are having a difficult time until you’re able to hold them and keep them close. Personally, I know this co-regulation strategy is working when I feel my child sink into the hug while I walk around carrying them.

4. Connect with your child’s interbrain

In his book Self-Regulation, Dr. Stuart Shankar talks about the role of the interbrain. This is the part of the brain through which newborns and parents connect and it forms the basis of meaningful human connection throughout our lives. It is at first a language-free connection where love and comfort are communicated through eye contact, cooing tones, and physical touch.

When our children are experiencing their most difficult human moments, we can try to connect with our child’s interbrain to calm them. Many times, I have been able to help calm my children down by looking into their eyes in a loving way, the same way I would have looked at them as a newborn. Along with looking at them in a loving way in an attempt to communicate through my eyes, I use a similar tone that I used with them as a newborn: “I love you so much. I can see you’re having a hard time. I love you even when you’re frustrated. I love you even when you’re angry. I love you even when you’re upset.” I’m always amazed at how genuinely express my love through my eyes, words, and tone helps to calm my child down.

As Dr. Shankar indicates, the power of the interbrain is that two brains can come into sync, experience deep pleasure in each other, then calm each other, all in that connection (p. 65). In addition, the science shows that this connection releases feel-good neurohormones, which serves not just our child’s deepest needs but also our own (p. 66).

In the midst of our children’s most difficult moments, looking at and speaking to our children in a loving tone can be a big challenge. However, I wager that if you give this a try and you practice it enough, you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how well it works. Connecting with your child’s interbrain will also help you to maintain your trust relationship with your child even through their most difficult moments.

5. Reflect your child’s feelings back to them

The idea of reflecting and validating a person’s feelings is not a new idea – it’s a fundamental skill of human connection that is taught in psychology and social work. Reflecting and validating our children’s feelings back to them is so important. It can reassure your child that you understand how they are feeling and it provides recognition and affirmation that their feelings are valid and important. Sometimes the act of mere validation can help to bring your child back to a more regulated state.

You can do this in two ways.  First, you can reflect your child’s feelings back to them by repeating their own words about their feelings.  This is the most effective because it demonstrates that you and listening to what they are saying and understanding their feelings and concerns.

Second, if your child isn’t as verbal, you can say things like:

• “I can see you are very upset right now.”
• “It seems like you might have a really tight feeling in your tummy.”
• “You feel like yelling/clenching your fists/lying down on the floor because you’re so angry.”
• “It’s hard to feel so angry and frustrated.”
• “It can be really hard to be [insert age] years old.”

So give this one a try, you may be surprised at how much it helps.

6. Visualize the kind of parent you want to be

This may be the most important tip in this whole article (and that’s saying something because they’re all very important): visualize the kind of parent you want to be when you’re child is struggling. As a high performance athlete, visualization always served me very well. It helped me play in the way I wanted to play and carry myself the way I wanted to carry myself on the court. It helped me perform the way I wanted to perform under high amounts of stress and in high pressure moments.

Proactively visualizing the way you want to react to your child during their most difficult times can help you support your child through their disregulation with patience, empathy and love. During particularly stressful periods of time, I would close my eyes at night and visualize myself calmly deescalating my child when they were having a hard time. I would also visualize a deep well of patience, which helped me support my child calmly through their difficult moments. Try out this strategy so that you can draw on your deep well of patience too while you help to co-regulate your child during their toughest times.

Put these strategies into action

Each of these strategies is helpful on its own but these strategies are particularly powerful when used in combination.  There are of course important caveats to this due to complexities of parenting: what works for one child may not work for another and what works in one situation may not always work in similar situations. So think of these strategies as additional tools that you might draw on during your child’s difficult moments that may be helpful to add to the other strategies and tools that you have already found helpful.

As you embrace this mindset shift and put into action some of the strategies discussed above, you will undoubtedly falter. We always do when we are learning new skills and trying new things; this is the messiness of beginnerhood. As a beginner, show yourself the same grace, forgiveness, patience, empathy, and love that you’re striving to demonstrate towards your own children in their most difficult moments.

Like many things in life, it’s in the most challenging moments that we have the opportunity to grow. So as a parent, I ask you to think about these moments – the really difficult ones for your children – as opportunities for growth.

In my parenting, I have embraced this mindset shift and deliberately work to support my children through their most difficult moments with patience, empathy and love. I certainly don’t do this perfectly all the time. But in those moments that I do it well, these difficult moments become moments filled with love.  When I do this well, there isn’t a big space created between me and my child – no chasm to bridge, no damage to repair – we come out the other side stronger and more connected.  And when I do this well, it’s worth all the time, practice, visualization and effort that I have put into it.

So I encourage you to give these strategies a try. And as you do, hang on to each little win – because those little wins will build a foundation of unconditional love and trust with your child and reassure them that you love them even through their most difficult and unlovable human moments.

We would love to hear your thoughts in the comments section below the article.

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Photo by Jordan Whitt on Unsplash