How to Help your Child Calm when they 'Refuse' Strategies
Sofia is happily playing in blocks center building the biggest tower she has ever built. She stands on her tip-toes to try and place her next block when suddenly, the entire structure collapses. Sofia stares momentarily in disbelief. Then, she lets out a blood curling scream and collapses on a heap in the floor. You go over and invite Sofia to breathe with you. Sofia throws some blocks and screams louder. You comment that Sofia seems to be feeling upset and frustrated. You offer her choices, “Would you like to take some deep breaths or hug a pillow?”. Sofia’s volume increases as she screams, “NOO!!”. You try to guide her to a cozy area full of soft pillows, sensory bottles, and favorite lovies. Sofia becomes dead weight and begins kicking the air with her legs.
It doesn’t take long before you realize that this situation is going downhill and fast! But what are your options? You know that taking deep breaths, being in a cozy space, and watching a sensory bottle would help Sofia. You’ve learned about and tried all the calming strategies. You’ve been working to learn how to identify emotions and what calming strategies might be useful. However, right now, she’s too emotionally dysregulated to *do* any of those things. If Sofia can’t engage in her calming activities and can’t calm herself down, what are you supposed to do? Are you just supposed to wait this situation out? Is waiting it out even an option?
What if there was a way to change Sofia’s emotional state without Sofia having to do anything? Sound like you’re living in a fantasy world? You’re not – and we provide step-by-step guidance (and a flowchart!) below.
Help your child calm EVEN when they ‘refuse’ (can’t process!) calming or coping strategies
If you’ve been reading our blog for awhile (thank you!) you know that we focus heavily on skill development. However, when children are experiencing strong emotions, it is just *not* the time for children to be learning new skills nor is it a time when children are able to use less familiar skills. Some children experience meltdowns and are completely incapable of processing new information. As an adult, this can look like ‘refusal’ but it’s so much more. As a parent or a teacher or a caregiver, what are you supposed to do in the meantime? What do we do during this interim period while we’re teaching and supporting the development of the skills Sofia needs? We regulate *for* them.
Emotion contagion - fancy words for a simple concept
Think about the people you interact with day-to-day. Do you have someone who just by spending time with them you find yourself feeling lighter, brighter, and overall in a more positive mood? On the flip side, can you think of someone who seems to suck all the air and energy out of a room? When you’ve finished spending time with them you feel exhausted, irritated, and in need of some space? That’s because emotions are contagious.
Researchers studying “emotional contagion” have found that people tend to copy or mimic the emotions of those around them (Hatfield, Cacioppo, & Rapson, 1993; Hatfield et al., 1994, Chartrand & Bargh, 1999). When we spend time with people who are light and happy, we feel happier just by sharing space with them. At the same time, spending time with someone who is in a bad mood brings down our overall mood and energy.
Not only are emotions contagious but so are our physiological states. We know that when we’re frustrated or angry or upset, we have a physical reaction in our body – our heart rate increases, our skin becomes warm (Butler et al., 2003). Not only do we experience changes in our own body, but the people around us experience similar changes – fun fact, this phenomenon is also why yawns are contagious (Prochazkova & Kret, 2017). For a review, check out You Know Sensations are Vital, but How in the World do you Teach Them?
Why do we care if emotional and physiological states are contagious? How does that help?
When a child is experiencing an incredibly strong and heightened emotional state, it’s often not possible for them to stop and shift their attention. As the adult in the situation, we know that certain things would be helpful for the child (ex: going to a safe space, taking some deep breaths, squeezing a pillow). But if we ask the child to do one of those tasks, things tend to just get worse and escalate even further. This happens because we’re placing yet another demand on the child’s already overwhelmed system. By asking them to do something else, we’re contributing to the problem and overtaxing an already overwhelmed and out of control system. Not super helpful ;-).
Instead, we can use what we now know about emotions to our advantage. Instead of asking the already overwhelmed and exhausted child to do extra work, we, as the adult, can carry some of the weight by regulating ourselves. Sharing space with the child and modeling our own calming strategies will assist with transferring our calmer state to the child.
“When we ask a child to try a calming strategy, we’re placing more demands on their already overwhelmed systems. Long story short, our ‘helping’ is making the situation worse”
Your Step-by-Step Guide for Calming your Child
All this talk about emotions and sensations being contagious sounds good in theory, but how do we put it into practice? To be honest, as you read through the steps, it will seem too easy to be true. Keep in mind that it’s significantly easier to decide you’ll stay calm and extrinsically regulate someone when you don’t actually have to *do* it. All co-regulatory strategies require practice. This strategy is no different. As you begin to try this strategy, you will experience mistakes and set-backs. That’s expected. Helping to regulate another individual is a skill - the good news is that this means we can improve this skill with practice :-).
We’ve put the following steps into a flow-chart which you can access here
In the beginning:
We’ve put these steps in a flowchart - suitable for both home and school use :-)
Regulate your own emotions - The first job is for you to gain control of your own emotional and body state. Helping children through challenging situations is not easy. Remember, if you’re showing and feeling stress, that’s going to be felt and noticed by others around you. Take several deep breaths and remind yourself that you’ve got this.
Decide if ‘space’ is an option - Sometimes the best thing we can do in these situations is to give a child space. However, sometimes this isn’t an option due to safety concerns or because it’s not something the child wants. If space is wanted and an option, give the child space and that’s the end of it!
Slowly move closer – Establish physical presence by sharing space but also making sure you’re a safe distance away. The amount of distance will depend on the child and the situation. Ideally you’ll be able to be at least an arms distance away. If you start moving towards a child and they protest further, stop. Model taking five more deep breaths and try again. When moving towards the child, make sure your movements are *slow*.
Model deep breathing – While sharing space with the child, model the deep breathing strategy of your choice. That’s it. You may feel it’s helpful to start talking to the child – for now, don’t. If the child is talking to you, that’s okay, we’ll discuss how and when to respond below. Continue to model deep breathing. If you have to move, keep your movements slow and smooth.
When your child is talking:
Validate concerns while continuing with deep breathing – During this process, it’s possible the child will begin sharing what is wrong. If this happens, simply validate what the child is saying. It’s possible you don’t agree with their perspective – now is not the time for a problem solving conversation. Remember our goal is to regulate, not problem solve. That will come later.
Examples of validating comments include: “That sounds frustrating”, “that seems hard”, “that sounds upsetting”. Continue to model deep breathing.
Use a lower tone of voice and slow your rate - Remember, we’re still working to de-escalate the situation. This means we want to make sure our voice still sounds calm and comforting. Generally speaking, this means we need to keep our pitch lower and we need to slow our rate of speech. Think ‘Mr Rogers’ talking for an example.
But what if the child is sharing ‘negative’ language?
Resist the urge to respond to ‘negative’ messages or comments – when children are experiencing intense and strong emotions, it is very possible they will say some not so nice things. Children are not in control of their bodies and actions right now. Resist the urge to correct or to take things personally – it’s not personal. Continue to model deep breathing.
Calming is happening, now what?
It may take some time before you reach this stage, that’s okay. People tend to want to rush into the 'problem solving’ stage but we just can’t problem solve well when we’re angry or frustrated or upset. It’s *always* a better idea to spend more time than you think is necessary just modeling deep breathing and calm talking.
Share supportive statements – over time, the child will begin to calm. You’ll notice this is happening as the crying or yelling begins to subside and the child’s breathing begins to slow down and align more with your own breathing. When this happens, you can explore the possibility of moving on from this experience. Try a general and supportive statement and see how the child responds. If the child responds negatively, back up and continue with the deep breathing and calm presence.
For example, “It seems like art was frustrating” or “I noticed you and Anna were having a hard time in blocks”.
Work together to generate a solution to the problem – once everyone is calm and able to talk through the situation, work to move to the ‘next steps’. If there is a problem to be fixed, work to generate a solution. If it’s time to move on to another activity, offer some choices for what the child can choose next. It’s very possible that once the child is calm, the problem they share is completely different from the initial problem/triggering event. That’s okay. Make a note of both the problem reported by the child and the problem as you perceived it. Both of these areas would likely benefit from some skill development.
Once everyone is calm, keep in mind that it’s okay to move past the current situation and perhaps revisit it at another time. Often, when a child is experiencing intense anger because of a mistake that they made or an unsuccessful interaction with another person (another child, sibling, parent), talking about the situation right now is just too much for them to handle. Revisiting very personal situations this soon will likely re-trigger the event. It’s okay to talk through the experience at a much later time - when it can be discussed objectively and without the strong emotions attached.
For quick and easy access, we’ve put this process into a flow chart. Don’t forget to grab your own copy of your co-regulation for calming flowchart. Gotta love a good visual!
References:
Butler, E. A., Egloff, B., Wilhelm, F. H., Smith, N. C., Erickson, E. A., & Gross, J. J. (2003). The social consequences of expressive suppression. American Psychological Association, 3(1), 48-67 doi: 10.1037/1528-3542.3.1.48
Chartrand, T. L., & Bargh, J. A. (1999). The chameleon effect: the perception-behavior link and social interaction. Journal of personality and social psychology, 76(6), 893–910. https://doi-org.ahecproxy.ncahec.net/10.1037//0022-3514.76.6.893
Hatfield E., Cacioppo, J. T., & Rapson, R.L., (1993). Emotional Contagion. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 2(3), 96-110 https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8721.ep10770953
Hatfield, E., Cacioppo, J.T., & Rapson, R. L.,(1994). Emotional Contagion. Cambridge University Press.
Prochazkova, E., & Kret, M. E. (2017). Connecting minds and sharing emotions through mimicry: A neurocognitive model of emotional contagion. Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews, 80, 99–114. https://doi-org.ahecproxy.ncahec.net/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2017.05.013