The Insight That Transformed My Parenting

I’m pretty amazed at how often our parenting instincts lead us astray. More often than not, I see ineffective tactics when I’m out and about with my little ones. “Spencer! Take turns on the slide” a well intentioned dad might yell from across the playground. “Sabine!!! DO NOT hit your brother!!!” I’ve yelled more times than I’d like to admit (the protective mama instinct is a scary, powerful thing). Understanding how your child’s brain is developing, and what’s happening as your discipline, can change everything.

My husband and I are lucky to be sending our children to a co-op preschool where there’s a “teaching parent” in the classroom every day. During our time in the classroom we’re able to observe experienced, highly educated teachers at work, where they model for us the effective ways to support our children as they learn basic social and emotional skills. We’re also required to attend a mindful parenting lecture in each of the first two years, where the director delivers valuable messages about parenting preschool age children. These touchpoints led to a few big ah-ha moments for me.

First, is that when your kid inevitabley freaks out about some insane minutia, what matters is that your kid is freaking out, not that the thing they’re freaking out about is trivial. It happens all the time at my house. Just last week, my children were in hysterics about a single blue window magnatile besides an entire mountain of the little magnetic plastic building tiles. The typical parent reaction is, “Come on guys, there’s a pink window right here. You love pink Sabine!” But to them, it’s a big freaking deal. They both WANT that blue magnatile. And we need to acknowledge that, because in that moment what’s really happening is your kid is feeling big emotions and doesn’t know how to manage them, no matter how inane the trigger from an adult’s point of view. Just saying, “I know it’s really frustrating, there’s only one and you both want it” goes a long way to making your kids feel understood and heard in your household. Think about it from the analogous adult interaction. Imagine you come home from work and tell your spouse / partner about what a bad day you had, and they just dismiss you and say, “Whatever, I wouldn’t be upset about that.” It’s not helpful. In fact, it makes you feel like they don’t really care. So lesson one: validate your little one’s feelings, no matter how silly they seem to you. They aren’t to them. It’ll make them feel understood as you help them navigate tough situations.

Second, is that when your kid does something they shouldn’t do, like hit another kid, or yell, or throw something across the room, don’t say, “Don’t do that!.” It’s important to recognize the impulse behind the action. Usually your kid is hitting because he or she is in a situation she doesn’t know how to resolve otherwise, hitting is the most effective tool they have to employ. Or maybe he’s throwing something across the room because he’s really upset and that’s the way he’s managing his big emotions in that moment. Most of the time, parents will just tell kids what not to do, instead of validating their emotions (see lesson one!), recognizing what they’re trying to achieve with the action, and then, critically — telling them what to do. That’s lesson two.

But parenting, as we all know, can be a total minefield. Even if we employ strategies that make a lot of intuitive sense, like the ones above, our kids will inevitably go nuclear on us. It’s their job to push boundaries, and it’s our job to set them. When that clash happens, it rarely goes smoothly. This would often lead me to wonder, am I missing something? Is there an even better way? Should I yell sometimes, I asked myself? It would seem to make sense if they’re doing something really bad, like hurting each other. Right?

Then I read No Drama Discipline by Daniel Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson (this is the parenting book I most highly recommend, but if you are time strapped I found an article summarizing it here). And that was all my analytical brain needed to have the confidence I knew exactly what I was doing as the parent of two preschoolers. It explained tactics in terms of brain development, and suddenly it all made perfect sense.

Our neocortex doesn’t stop developing until our mid twenties (understanding the implications of this must be absolutely critical for surviving the teenage years). In the preschool years, the amygdala rules: our lizard brains where all of the emotions are being processed. As the executive function of the neocortex evolves, the connections between the two strengthen, and we are increasingly able to manage our emotional responses. So when your kid is upset or worse yet, amidst a full on tantrum, their lizard brain has taken over and they literally have no access to their rational brain.

There was a fascinating study done on adults, where they were asked to look at images of human faces in different emotional states. The study monitored their brain functioning when seeing those images. When a threatening face came up, their fight or flight response triggered, firing their amygdala. Asked to complete the same exercise while stating the emotion on the faces, their brains responded very differently. The act of labeling the emotions required the neocortex, which diminished the activity within the amygdala.

What does this have to do with parenting? So here’s your kid freaking out about getting the yellow gumball instead of the blue one. It seems totally trivial to you, “you still have a gumball, chewing gum is the key function of a freaking gumball for god’s sake child calm the f* down” is likely the dialogue playing out in your head. Ah but you remember they are experiencing big emotions, that matters, and so you say, “You’re really frustrated you didn’t get the color gumball you wanted, aren’t you?” It’s not that they just feel heard, which matters too. More critically, their brain was just completely hijacked by their amygdala. They had no access to their rational brain. But with that statement, by giving them the words for the emotions they are feeling, you just triggered their neocortex for them. And that just calmed their amygdala. Note: this doesn’t always work, sometimes they are so far gone you have to just hold them to calm them down. My son sometimes goes so far off the deep end anything I do further freaks him out, but you get the point. By validating and stating their emotions and triggering their neocortex, you essentially just acted as an external part of their brain, drawing the connection between the two regions. By doing so, you’re also helping to connect those parts of the brain so eventually, your kid’s brains can do that on their own. Holy shit, right?

Now that they have started to calm down and their neocortex is online again, they can process your genius lessons about what they can do in those situations: to manage their emotions, to resolve conflict with their siblings, to realize whatever outcome they want. While they are in the middle of the crazy tantrum, you’re totally wasting your breath.

There’s an important implication of all this that I haven’t mentioned yet. That’s what happens when your kid is upset and you get angry and frustrated. Even if you don’t yell, your facial expressions or body language may be sending a threatening message. If they are, you are further activating your kid’s amygdala. He or she is just going to get more upset and less capable of calming down and learning how to manage the situation better next time (note: this logic applies to grown ups as well….). Worse yet, just as when you’re naming the emotion you help draw connections between the neocortex and the amygdala, when you get upset and fire their amygdala further, you’re wiring their brain in the wrong direction!!! So when is yelling productive? Never, it turns out.

So when you’re kid is freaking out about nothing, remember what’s going on in his or her little developing brain. When they’re doing the wrong thing, remember that they don’t yet have or know how to use the tools to manage their big emotions, or compromise when they can’t get what they want, or resolve conflicts with their siblings. It’s our job to teach them these tools, and to keep our cool as best as we possibly can. Keep Calm and Discipline On, my parenting friends! I even made a poster for you :).