I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the concept of pre-regulation and how it can help with preventing meltdowns. Today, you’ll learn how to help your kid get calm (and stay calm) so you have less dysregulation and fewer tantrums.

You’ll Learn:

• Why meltdowns actually happen
• Things you might be doing that make tantrums worse
• How to help you child calm their nervous system in the moment
• Tons of simple (and fun) strategies I used with my kids to keep them calm in advance to prevent meltdowns from happening

I hope you implement just one or two of these this week for yourself and for your kids. Then, tell me how it goes!

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Understanding Meltdowns and Regulation

In kids, dysregulation often looks like kicking, screaming, punching, yelling at you, saying really crazy things… aka a tantrum or meltdown. I like to call them Big Feeling Cycles. You can actually see that your child is sort of out of control. 

As a parent, the instinct is often to try to control that behavior. So maybe you raise your voice, make a threat, or try to bribe your kid in order to stop the behavior. But these don’t deal with the cause of the meltdown, because feelings drive behavior.

Arguing or trying to “teach them a lesson” doesn’t help in these situations. It usually just creates more problems.

When you trust that the grumpiness, complaining, or meltdown is temporary, it gives you some perspective. You’re able to allow for some of those feelings to be and have compassion.

A helpful thought for you when your kid is in the midst of a Big Feeling Cycle is: Thoughts and feelings are like weather. They always pass. 

As your kid’s emotional coach, your goal is to help them get out of fight or flight (the sympathetic nervous system) and into rest and digest (the parasympathetic nervous system). 

Imagine this (or maybe it already happened in your house today)… Your kid is having a fit because they’re in a bad mood and they don’t want their chicken nuggets. Instead of arguing, you say, “Okay. Eat it or don’t eat it. We’ll figure it out.” And then all of a sudden, they start eating! What happened in that moment is that their nervous system came back online, and they’re better able to regulate.

 

In-the-Moment Strategies for Calming Big Feelings

If you want to go deeper and get the step-by-step process for these strategies, I’ve done individual podcasts episodes on most of them, so go back and listen!

 

The Connection Tool is your best strategy to handle a Big Feeling Cycle. It has three parts:

1. Narrate the situation - What is happening? What behaviors are you seeing?
2. Name the emotion - I wonder if you’re feeling…
3. Now what? - Give your child another strategy to communicate or cope with their big feelings.

 

The 3 Rs of emotional regulation are also really helpful in getting back to calm.

1. Rhythm - Intentionally moving your body in a way that has a soothing effect on you. This could be jumping, swinging your arms, or doing a shimmy shake.
2. Relationship - When you have someone come alongside you and say, “You’re okay. I’ve got you. We can handle this,” it takes away the fight or flight response. You’re no longer alone and afraid. 
3. Reward - This isn’t a reward like a toy or ice cream. It’s a little dopamine kick that can be achieved by completing a small task. This isn’t one that you can do right in the middle of a Big Feeling Cycle, but if you catch it before the train has fully left the station, you might be able to turn things around.

 

Intercepting or interrupting the Big Feeling Cycle with a small task or limit can sometimes prevent a full-on meltdown. 

Using reward, as mentioned above, is one example of this. Maybe you say, “Okay, I want to talk to you about that, but why don't you go ahead and take your shoes and put them in the shoe bin and come right back. Let's see how fast you can do it.”

A limit might sound like saying, “I’m happy to listen to you as long as you stop screaming,” or, “I can only listen to kids who are using their best voice. I can’t hear you when you use that voice.”

These interruptions aren’t meant to make them forget how they’re feeling. It’s just a way to help lessen the intensity of the emotion. It forces the brain to do some thinking, and that helps them shift from the limbic (emotional) part of the brain back into the more logical part. 

 

After the Big Feelings Pass

A lot of times you really just need to wait it out. For some kids, Big Feeling Cycles might last 30 minutes. It just depends on how dysregulated they are. 

After they start to settle, movement is still a great way to reset. 

Then, one of the most valuable things you can do is give your child space to express themself and process what they are feeling. Let them tell you more about why they’re so mad, sad, frustrated, etc. 

Don’t try to change their feelings. Often, when kids are complaining or talking about something hard, we want to give them perspective. We want to silver line it or tell them they should be grateful. But when you do this, it shuts them down. This is not the time to teach values; it’s the time to let them process their emotion.

If you don’t have the capacity to listen, suggest that they go talk to their stuffed animals or a pet about how they’re feeling. Or they can record it for you, and you can listen later when you’re able. 

Neutral listening is also an option if you aren’t able to fully participate in the conversation. When you do this, you aren’t really tuned in, but you’re there as a sounding board while your child talks it all out. 

Not all kids are talkers. Some will do better with showing you their feelings. You can ask them to do things like show you how sad they are with their face or throw down a pillow to show you how mad they are.

If they don’t want to do it, that’s fine. This isn’t about control. It’s about offering them options and solutions to process and move through their negative emotion. 

 

Preventing Meltdowns with Pre-Regulation

Ideally, we can catch dysregulation before it becomes a full-blown meltdown. Pre-regulation is the idea of keeping your kid calm in advance. It’s about noticing when your child is starting to go offline and helping them get back on track. 

One of my favorite ways to do this is with the Preview tool. With this strategy, you talk through an event or activity that is coming up with your child. Is there a challenging situation that might happen? How do they want to deal with it if it does? 

For example, your child’s sibling is having a birthday party. The sibling is having friends over, they’re going to get presents, everyone is going to be paying attention to them. You can say to your child, “You might feel sad, lonely, or jealous today. Those feelings are totally normal and okay. But let's talk about what you're going to do with those feelings when they come up. Let's make a plan. Do you want to come to me? Do you want to go sit by yourself? Do you want to have a special toy that you're playing with?”

You problem solve with them ahead of time.

You can also pre-regulate when you notice your child starting to get overwhelmed. When one of my sons was young, I could tell he was starting to go offline when he didn’t engage with his friends right away at school drop-off. This was my cue to help him calm his nervous system before he went into the classroom.

Other times pre-regulation can be really helpful are before homework, when you see complaining or sibling conflict starting, and before bed. 

Here are some examples of things you can do:

• Do patterns of clapping, stomping, and hopping and have them copy what you do
• See how high or how fast they can jump
• Have them push against your hands 
• Use compression (e.g. give a big hug, cover them in a blanket and put your weight on them)
• Play a game like Statue
• Sing a song or count together
• Balance on one foot
• Race to the end of the driveway
• Push or pull something, like a wagon or laundry basket
• Swing

Different things work for different kids, so get creative!

 

I hope you implement just one or two of these this week for yourself and for your kids. Then, tell me how it goes!

 

Resources:

• Learn to use The Connection Tool
• Episode 87: The 3 Rs of Emotional Regulation
• Episode 8: Pause & Reset Your Body
• Episode 170: Sensory Activities for Kids with Alisha Grogan
• Episode 195: Raising Neurodivergent Kids with Sara Hartley

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✨ A simple tool to stop yelling once you’ve started (This one thing will get you calm.)

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✨A script to say to your kids when you yell. (So they don't follow you around!)

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