The Key to Effective Discipline: Parent Emotion Regulation Matters
By Drs. Elizabeth Sylvester & Kat Scherer
Children’s misbehaviors are some of the most stressful and exasperating parts of parenting. However, we may not realize how our own emotional reactivity to misbehavior can worsen behavior. We will explore how aspects of our attempts to discipline can backfire.
Misbehavior is far more likely when children are emotionally upset or dysregulated. Is your child hitting? He’s probably overly mad. Is he crying and clinging? Likely scared. Behaving annoyingly? May need attention. How about sneaking? She may fear she won’t get what she wants if she asks for it. (And she might be right.) Acting out children always have a reason, and the reason is often that they are upset. Children don’t express themselves like adults do; they tend to communicate their distress through behavior — often misbehavior. And their strong negative feelings and behavior are likely to provoke the adults around them.
As a result, parents are often emotionally dysregulated while dealing with misbehaving children. If we’re honest, most parents know the feelings of frustration, anxiety, dread, and embarrassment that they grapple with when children are screaming in public, still tantruming after 15 minutes, or clinging and refusing to say hello to grandma. These types of incidents can challenge our emotional stability and easily topple us into behaviors and reactions that we would never have planned.
Two dysregulated people, even if they are parent and child, can cause mutual escalation. The parents’ negative feelings can lead them to be overly harsh or insensitive, leading to further upset feelings in their children and so on, sometimes to a disastrous end. Dysregulation is contagious. We as humans can match the emotional state of the person across from us, which can give rise to wonderful moments of emotional resonance, or equally intense and painful moments of hostility.
As a result of our neurobiological wiring, we can track another person’s emotional state without even realizing it. When we sense another’s stress or negative emotions, we respond automatically. Children or parents can go into a defensive state, such as ‘fight or flight’ (sympathetic nervous system), when they sense another’s anger or feel threatened. Defensive responses can include aggressive feelings or actions or, on the other hand, physical or emotional shutdown.
The good news is that just as negative feelings and emotional escalation can pass from one person to another, so can positive feelings of calm and stability. When children interact with a settled adult, their nervous systems sense this. It is perceived as a cue of safety. When a safe and regulated adult is present, the child’s emotions can diminish, stabilize, or at least escalate more slowly. In other words, the regulated adult can avoid squirting lighter fluid on the flame of the child’s feelings.
So, how can parents do this? The key is to know yourself and prioritize your emotional regulation. In the heat of the moment, you can focus on calming your nervous system before you act on your impulse. You may be able to calm yourself by taking some breaths, going to another room, repeating a calming statement to yourself, or doing something different that works for you. How you communicate in these moments can help you feel regulated, or at least appear to be more regulated: for example, you can work to control your tone of voice, rate of speech, facial expressions, or posture to reflect that you are calm and emotionally available.
However, the most robust and reliable ability to regulate comes not from what you do in the moment of upset but rather from the quality of your day-to-day self-care. It helps if you reduce your stress, call friends for help, or take time for your spiritual life. Your physical care, including diet, sleep, and physical activity, also affect regulation. Whichever of these is helpful is where you can put your focus. The closer to balance you are, the less daunting behavioral and emotional regulation will be.
The benefits of being a regulated parent are manifold. When regulated and grounded, you are more able to honor boundaries, which helps you respect the differences between yourself and your child. Childish upset does not need to become your upset. Your child’s loss of control does not need to become your loss of control. Regulated parents are also better able to:
- Tolerate disruptions or mistakes
- Be calm, clear, and thoughtful
- Build trust and security with their children
- Be clear in setting family rules and boundaries
- Create a peaceful home environment
- Get difficult interactions back on track
- Find stability and be a safe witness to their children’s struggles
- Avoid impulsivity and make good decisions
- Feel comfort with themselves and create comfort in relationships
- Allow children time and space to calm themselves
When parents practice regulation when upset, interrupting an aggressive or dismissive urge, they are literally laying neurological pathways to aid them in self-control in the future. This is regulation ‘practice.’ Like a well-worn path, once we have rehearsed coping with distress and returning to a calm state before acting, we find it is easier to do so again in the future.
If you want a peaceful child, and a peaceful home, finding your way to a peaceful self is the path.
Reference:
Sylvester, E. & Scherer, K. (2022) Relationship-Based Treatment of Children and Their Parents: An integrative guide to neurobiology, attachment, regulation, and discipline. WW Norton.
Elizabeth Sylvester, PhD and Kat Scherer, PhD, MFT, C-IAYT are practicing Psychologists in Austin, Texas. In addition to their clinical work they have spent much of their careers presenting on attachment, interpersonal neurobiology, emotional development, and relationship-based parenting to therapists, teachers, and caregivers. Checkout their website: Relationship-Based Treatment.
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(A version of this post was also published in Psychology Today Blog. June 2024)
