The “first day of school” nerve
Today was the first day of school after a two week break.
As you can imagine, the morning started pretty chaotic.
First, my son didn’t want to wake up. Then my daughter didn’t want to eat breakfast. Then they started fighting…
The closer we got to being late, the more stressed I got.
Now, my normal reaction in these situations has always been to start rushing the kids, then nagging, and then finally yelling and threats.
But adding more stress to the morning just makes everything worse.
It might get you to school on time, but everyone ends up angry at everyone else, and the whole day starts off bad.
However, this time was different.
You see, last week I learned several new techniques that parents can use to stay calm. These techniques are all about “calming the vagus nerve.”
Now, the vagus nerve is the central nerve connecting your brain, heart and digestive system, and recent discoveries have shown that it plays a key role in calming your body after you’ve been in a stressful situation.
You see, when you get upset or frustrated with your kids, your nervous systems registers a threat — even if it is just your child not wanting to brush their teeth — and switches your body into fight-or-flight mode.
Your “vagus nerve” is the part of your nervous system that is responsible for sending the “all-clear” signal — the signal that everything is fine and you can calm down.
And the more you can strengthen the pathways in this nerve, the easier it becomes to calm down and not react to your body’s “threat” signals.
Just understanding this concept already helps you stay calm, because reminding yourself that it is natural to feel upset, but that you don’t have to react to those feelings is one way of returning to that calm, rational state.
But there are several more techniques for strengthening and stimulating your vagus nerve, in order to calm down instead of escalating when you are in an agitated state.
This morning, I tried some of these “vagus nerve” calming exercises…and my morning turned out so much better than I expected.
In fact, instead of dropping my kids off at school with everyone mad at everyone else…I had such a great morning with them.
My son even came to me just before I left him at school, gave me a hug, and told me “I really like you mom.”
Here’s the thing: the better you get at staying calm, the better your kids will get at staying calm, and the better your relationship with your kids will be.
If you struggle to stay calm when your kids upset you, then check out my book “How To Get Your Kids To Listen.”
This books contains interviews I did with 24 of the world’s leading parenting experts — best-selling authors, child psychologists and psychiatrists, teachers, and parenting coaches.
Download your free copy of my book — How To Get Your Kids To Listen — for free here.
